


The Righteous Path

by MyLifeasPeach



Series: Prodigy [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Memory Loss, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and a bit of whisky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:04:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyLifeasPeach/pseuds/MyLifeasPeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What I’m saying with this is that there’s nothing more terrifying than the fury of a righteous man, Barnes“ says Fury, lowering a bit his shades to let him see his scarred white blind eye before he adds “And we all know how fucking terrifying you can be.”</p><p>or the one where Bucky had recovered most of his memories but doesn't want to face Steve with his hands still dripping red, until Steve finds him and forces him to look back into his own fears and the things he's not sure he's ready to remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Damn it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big SO to [Ink-Phoenix](http://ink-phoenix.tumblr.com/) for allowing me to use her quote.  
> Huge Big SO and THANKS to **Stringlish** for Beta and corrections. As I told you, there are not enough words (not even in spanish) to thank you.

\---

 

The first thing he noticed when he wakes up is that his head is killing him. He groans a little and tries to move. That’s when he notices the second thing: he’s tied up and pretty strongly, with big iron bounds holding his hands, both metal and flesh together. Same with his ankles and waist.

“Damn it…”

Then he tries to remember what happened, how did he end up there…

And where the hell is he, anyway?

Bucky opens his eyes to find himself in an abandoned warehouse, maybe an old factory or something, with a thick layer of dust covering the concrete floor and just a quivering fluorescent bulb over his head. The broken windows allowed for a soft breeze to drift inside. By the look of it, it was dark outside, but the brightness is enough to let him know that dawn is close.

That brings him to the past night. He was doing what he’d been doing throughout the past month since he'd finally gotten himself clear enough to start with his own personal mission.

The Hydra facility he was striking was a place that looked very much like the wasteland he was in now, at least at first sight. Beneath,the surface was something completely different, yet not as amazing as he thought he would find; just a dozen goons and three scientists working in some lab, testing a silver fluid that was floating in the middle of a crystal cage.

Killing them all was easy and it kind of felt good; like it was the right thing to do. Especially when one of the guys in a lab coat recognized him and tried to stop him using a kill-switch.  It was a futile attempt, since he'd took care to take the detonator out of his metal arm along with the tracker a while ago. The downside of that was the massive damage his lethal weapon had suffered, making his left metal arm slower and weaker. It'd been something that cost him his consciousness that night, when someone attacked him from behind and he couldn’t shake her before he felt the sharp bite of a needle injecting something in his neck. He fought and managed to hit his attacker a few times, though her movements were too fast and the last roundhouse kick she connected with his head helped the narcotic to put him down.

So, it was a woman; the same one from before that was standing in front of him now. She wore a black catsuit, her Asian heritage was made all the more apparent by her stern expression.

“He’s awake”, she says, addressing another person in the room that he hadn’t noticed until that moment.

“About damn time” he hears the other man say.

The guy comes into the light and stands before him. He is tall and his skin is dark as the night, menacing like a beast preying over him while he uncrosses his arms and pulls up the collar of his black long leather jacket. The only detail Bucky thinks is out of place are the sunglasses that the guy is wearing in the middle of the night. It isn't until he notices the marks around his left eye, that he remembers.

“You?” Bucky asks, realizing his voice sounds raspy and weak, but not giving it a second thought because his attention was focused on the one thing he was now sure about that guy: “I killed you!”

Months before, after they took him out of cryo, his first mission was that man.

He recalls their stand off in the street where he shot at his SUV, but the man had managed to escape; and later, when he shot him three times from the roof of a nearby building while he was hiding with Steve.

He also remembers what he’d informed to his handlers later that night.

‘ _Mission Report: Objective S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury. Target Eliminated with prejudice. Acceptable collateral damage.'_

“Yeah, well, not so much” says the man in front of him with a sarcastic smile, “But nice try, son.”

He failed. He didn’t know he’d failed, but he did. And now, as he’d always feared, his mistakes might cost him too much.

“You gonna turn me in?” asks Bucky, keeping himself as calm as he can, staring into the shades. He attempts to catch a glimpse of his eyes behind them, but the dim light doesn’t cut him any slack, “Or are you here to get your payback?”

Each possibility spells trouble for him, but he knows he’s gotten out from worse. Maybe he can’t remember what those experiences were, but he _knows_ he’d survived least favorable scenarios.

The answer he gets, though, is far from what he was ready to face.

“I’m here to talk”, says the dark man in front of him. _Fury_ , he remembers, _His name is Nick Fury._

“Doesn’t look like that to me”, he responds, looking down at his wrists wrapped inside the heavy irons.

“Those are just a precaution, soldier…” Fury starts to explain, but Bucky cuts him off before he can say another word.

“It's sergeant.”

“Excuse me?” asks Fury, looking a bit upset with his interruption.

“I’m a Sergeant” he explains, this time his voice regaining some of his normal confidence, using it to add immediately “And don’t call me son either; I’m old enough to be… What? Your father?”

The reaction he gets is a chuckle, not just from Fury, but Bucky was sure he could see the barest hint of a smile playing at the lips of the woman behind him. 

“I don’t think that would be possible,” answers the _failed mission_ , looking rather content with himself, asking next “So you got your memories back?”

_So he knows._

Of course he knows. He probably knows everything.

“… Some of them”, Bucky replies, making a brief recount of what he has recovered so far. From the past few months of being a fugitive from his old handlers, some of his missions he would rather forget. He remembers a few pieces from the Red Room, the days in Europe with the Howling Commandos and before that, Brooklyn and the sunshine that brightened his days with a smile. That memory made him realize he didn’t want to share any of them with the guy so he just says “Enough to remember we are not friends.”

At least not that he can recall.

“No, we are not” says Fury, giving him that battle, but adding quickly in a more sneaky voice, “But seems we have a common enemy.”

He knows what he’s trying to play, but right now he’s got a few more movements he can make to keep evading him.

“What? Coffee prices? ‘cause these days, that shit’s expensive…” says Bucky with a smirk, an expression that seems strange to his mouth and that actually is, when he thinks about it, he can’t remember when had been the last time he’d smiled that way.

Fury laughs at his words, though it sounds more like a simple snort. “Good to know you got your legendary sass back too.”

“Just let me out of this and I’ll show you legendary” he replies, smirking widely.

“And that’s exactly the reason why the shackles stay on”, says Fury as he takes a few steps closer and crouches down in front of him, “But as I said, I’m here to talk.”

Bucky looks down into the black shades and then glances at the woman, staring at both of them in calm silence, something soothing that reminds him of someone else from another life, the only reason he choose to give this all a try.

“Guess I’m not in the position to say I don’t want to listen”, he replies, returning his attention to Fury and his menacing grin.

“You’d been going against Hydra’s facilities for a while now, leaving some good messes behind you…”

“Guilty”, he mutters with a cocky little smile at the corner of his lips.

“I can say I’m impressed…” adds Fury with a sort of condescending tone in his voice.

But he’s not biting so easily this time. “Thank you “, he says with a fake gentle frown, “Always good to meet a fan.”

But his little joke doesn’t stop Fury and he just continues without sympathy.

“… But you’re getting messy” he accuses and it feels like he’d been backhanded across his face, though he know he’s right. The last few runs he had were far from the perfect work he used to do, not just because he was possessed by some roaring rage, but also due to the lack of intel he was getting from every mission. Besides, the thugs he managed to assault never carried good equipment to take and the brains usually opted out before he could take any good information. Not to mention, how much he was missing the good care the scientists took of his cybernetic arm, now malfunctioning badly.

“You are leaving too much shit behind” Fury continues, scanning his thoughts for what he can tell, “That’s how I found you… and if I found you, then soon your friend will find you too.”

Bucky raises his head a bit, unable to conceal the distressful expression from his face. Just the mention of Steve is enough to make him hold his breath a second.

“You know Steve Rogers had been hunting you these last couple of months, right?” asks Fury, clearly noticing his grief.

His jaw clenches before he answers, “Of course I know.”

He’d been aware of Steve looking for him for the past few months, following behind and getting closer each day. More than once, he’d mused the thought of just turning his path back around one day and letting the captain find him, but every single time he’d reject that stupid ass idea.

He couldn’t face him, not with his hands still dripping red.

“I guess you just don’t want to reunite with your old flame yet.“  Fury assumes rightly, in a low voice that feels too close to a sneer.

“That’s none of your business”, he snaps immediately.

“You’re right. Its not” accepts Fury, getting back on his feet in a slowly very well planned movement, like he owned the scene. “What is indeed my business is that I want _you_ to keep doing what y _ou_ seem to do better than anyone else”, says the man while cocking his head a bit, like he was inspecting him from another perspective before finishing his bid “And I’m here to offer you my help.”

Bucky takes a moment to size his answer, shaking his head back to whip his long dirty hair from his eyes before he replies.

“Why would I trust you?” he asks first, “You were a good friend of Pierce…”

“Who betrayed me and sent you to kill me.” Fury cuts before he can finish his sentence “And who I shot for that” he adds at the end, allowing his mouth to show a satisfied smile “And, believe me, it felt _really_ good.”

Maybe it’s the way in which it was said, but the smile seems contagious.

“Bet it did…”

“And I’m quite sure you’d like to get your own revenge against some of your old Nazi friends, but I happen to know your resources are limited, and judging from the smell of burnt wiring, you need some tech assistance too” continues Fury with self confidence beaming from him “I can provide you with that and more…”

The offer is interesting, he can’t deny that, but damn his soul if he will let the man convince him that easily.

“And I ask again, why would I trust you?” he asks slowly, dragging each word.

Fury smiles, clearly pleased with the question.

“Because, right now, I’m your best chance to give you what you need so you can get what you want…”

He frowns a mere instant before his eyes narrow, cold and inquisitive.

“And what would that be?” he asks, wondering how deep this guy knows what he’d been up to.

“Aleksander Lukin.”

And he seems to know _everything_.

The name burns inside of him like it’s carving a new wound open and bleeding. After everything he’d remember, after he went through every single memory he could evoke, the only name that lasted longer than any other, that was always present somehow everywhere during his late years as the Winter Soldier, was that.

His expression remains cool as he straightens his back as much as he can, staring at Fury intensely with his steel blue eyes.

“… I’m listening.”

Fury turns for a second to the woman behind him, with just that she gets closer and Bucky can take a better look at her. She should be around her thirties and he can tell that behind her emotionless exterior, there’s an intense rage burning with passion.

“As you know” Fury starts, catching his attention again, “S.H.I.E.L.D. went down with Hydra and the helicarriers, but as the serpent is already regrouping, so is S.H.I.E.L.D.” He explains in a slow, but compelling pace “Rebuilding itself from the very foundations, this time taking good care that no bad seeds get in unnoticed.”

That last part makes Bucky chuckle “… And you want me to get involved with that?”  he inquires, a cocky smile playing at his lips, “The Winter Soldier, fist of Hydra?”

“More like Bucky Barnes” Fury corrects him “National hero and Captain America’s…”

“Don’t you dare say ‘ _sidekick_ ’!” burst Bucky before he can finish.

“I was going to say best friend, but now that you mention it…”

He glares and even lets a little grunt come out from his throat, but at the end says nothing.

“The point is,” Fury continues immediately, “My people can help you. Maybe we don’t have all the resources we used to have a few months ago, but I trust this very specific team would be everything you need. Director Coulson is in control but I presume right now he’s very busy with the whole rebuilding issue. ...Still the people he’s in charge of has a genius level-hacker that can get you any intel you might need to find and engage your targets; a biochemist and an engineer who can, not only help you with your arm but also provide you with great toys I’m sure you’re going to like, also a couple of great field agents that can serve you with backup and, of course, you already met agent Melinda May…”

The woman smiles as she's called upon, though her eyes remain cool with the same calculating intensity he’d already noticed. And liked.

“Our team had been chasing some of these threads” says she, speaking finally, with a voice so raw he knows she means serious business “Last year we encountered a whole operation that was linked to a technology company called Cybertek, who was working with Hydra developing something called the Centipede Project and also trying to create super soldiers to sell to the government, but that line of investigation took us to another thread that lead us to THEM, what seems to be the new name AIM took after their leader got captured. Both are working under the parasol of some multinational energy corporation that has Aleksander Lukin as one of its associates.” She explains in the same way she probably does her mission reports. She made it simple for him to follow as he listens carefully while trying to connect what she’s saying with anything he might know already, but there’s not much he can add and there’s so much he’s just getting to know in that moment. “We’d been tracking him down for weeks, but this guy is elusive and now we have our hands full with some other problems...”

She concludes and Fury takes his turn immediately “That’s why we need you on our side, Barnes.”

Bucky stares back at him but remains in silence, still considering his options in that bargain.

“Don’t get me wrong” the man adds, raising his big hands to add strength to his words with a raw movement, “I don’t expect you to be an agent or to follow my lead, or anyone’s lead in this dance” he explains in a manner of fact, “I just want you to keep doing what you’d been doing, but with our help.”

“And under your surveillance” says Bucky, sharpening his glare at the ex S.H.I.E.L.D Director.

“I would rather call it _protection_ ” corrects Fury again, making it sound almost credible for the manner in which he says it “I know some of your ex-handlers are still after you and I’m sure you’d like to get off the grid for a while.”

“No, I don’t.” he says, but it’s a lie.

This time it's the woman who speaks “Our team has intel about the Hydra’s facilities that had been linked to these corporations” says agent May with the same severe tone she’d been using the whole time, “And seems some of them are still operative, but we can’t intervene…”

“Because SHIELD doesn’t want to get involved in this kind of shit when it’s trying to clean its name” finishes Fury, with a sort of growl under his voice.

Bucky looks at them both and his smiles gets wider, “So… That’s what you need me for…”

“And to keep Captain America from doing it” adds Fury, instantly killing Bucky’s smile with just his mention “After everything that happened in DC, the last thing he needs is being arrested for going against some dirty corporation while looking for you. Because that’s what would happen if he digs a little more” he warns and Bucky knows is true. ”We need him clean from all this shit that will come down on us once we get started. And there’s nobody who knows better how that works, Barnes. ”

Bucky glares at him, but he understands. Just like he said, nobody would ever know better how that works but him. Back in the day, Steve was this perfect symbol of freedom, justice and everything that’s good in the world, the only way to keep him beaming in his pure light of divine American glory was if someone did the dirty jobs for him. And, as always, Bucky was the most willing scapegoat, offering himself as the one doing the shooting and cleaning the area before the hero could make his grand entrance. It was the least he could do to keep him safe, not just from the bullets, but from all the nightmares that the real war carried within, the one he tried to save him from but couldn’t, because those bastards took his precious sunshine and turned him into the final weapon.

That he could understand, more than any other implanted idea or created thought, more than any memory he could have regained, that was the only real mission he’d been following once and again.

_Keep him safe._

He looks down at his wrists and holds them up a bit for Fury. He gets the hint and takes a little remote control from his pocket, pressing a button that unlocks his bonds immediately, making a loud noise when they fall to the dirty cement floor.

Bucky stands up slowly, rotating his right wrist to feel it loosen up, though his left makes a strange metallic screech and he notices he can’t move his fingers too much and he can’t close his fist at all.

Still he manages to clean his leathery black stealth suit a bit before he looks at the woman.

“You’ve got a mean kick, ma’am”, says Bucky with a subtle smile.

“It was an honor to use it against you, sir”, she says in return, mimicking him on her own red lipstick and he remembers a few more things he should have to check later.

“Please, you can call me Bucky.”

He takes a steadying breath before he turns to face the other man, standing tall and now looking him right in the eye, yet even with his combat boots on, Fury was still a bit taller.

“What can I say? You got my attention” he admits with a soft shrug just on his right shoulder, because his left doesn't respond, “But to be clear, I know you’re a fucking liar, I know you’re hiding a lot of shit from me and that you will probably double-cross me at anytime” his voice taking more and more his old accent back “I don’t trust you at all.”

He expects to get some shit back, but Fury seems to get it better than he did.

“But I do trust you, Barnes, you’re a good guy” he says with a wry smile “Have you read the Bible?”

“What?” he response in surprise, looking at the woman for some input, thinking if that would mean something else, maybe a countersign of some strange sort, but all he can see is the tired look in the eyes of the agent and nothing else, so he answers “No… Not recently.”

“Ezekiel 25:17” says Fury before he starts to recite “ _The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you.”_

When he finishes Bucky is staring at him incredulous at what just happened, realizing in some point of his speech he’d dropped his jaw and his mouth was open, closing it and glancing again at the woman. She just gives him a little shrug as the only explanation of what might be something common for her.

The man doesn’t seem to care. He just gets closer until he puts his hand over each of Bucky’s shoulders, metal and flesh.

“What I’m saying with this is that there’s nothing more terrifying than the fury of a righteous man, Barnes“ says Fury, lowering a bit his shades to let him see his scarred white blind eye before he adds “And we all know how fucking terrifying you can be.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it (or not), please leave a comment. Means the world to me.


	2. Playground

 

 

**\---**

The main building looks like an assemblage of concrete and crystal cubes of different dimensions, all pile up together in a messy way, like they were blocks a two years old giant was playing with, planted in the middle of some mountains Bucky’s sure belong to Washington, as they moved west in their flight and dawn is again behind of him for another hour.

After they land the chopper near the main building, he waits for the blades to stop spinning and for Nick Fury to gives the order to finally descend, walking a step behind him with Agent May following a couple steps at his back.

Once closer to a side entrance, he can see a round funny looking guy approaching to them, with his hands full holding a huge black briefcase and a couple of folders in the other, walking quickly to meet them.

“I’m Agent Koenig,” says the guy enthusiastically, like he was in a special sort of bliss with their arrival, “Welcome to the Playground.”

Bucky looks around at the place that seems to be the garage, holding a few big assault vehicles, two SUV and right beside he sees one car that looks completely out of place, with its old look and its bright red color, shinning over the predominant black. Behind that Bucky can see the entrance to a practice shooting range and he bets the armoury should be close too.

“Playground?” asks Fury apparently incredulous with what the guy’s saying “You really named my secret operation base _Playground_?”

“It kind of look like a playground to me…” says Bucky turning again to the little guy, who was still holding his smile, shutting it down almost a second after when he handled Fury the briefcase and Agent May one black thin folder.

“The devices you ordered, sir” says Koenig before turn himself again to Bucky and continue with his welcome speech “Your identification card and your badge will be ready by midday, agent Barnes, so until then I’ll escort you around our installations to grant you free access to them.”

Fury turns to look at Koenig with his mouth outlining a smile.

“Barnes’ not an agent” says Nick with a tone that was too close to be mocking him, “And consultants don’t get badges, unless things are already changing too much without me on top.”

But Koenig doesn’t seem to care. “Director Coulson said that Sergeant James Barnes, as a Howling Commando, was also a member of the SSR” informs he hastily, “And there’s the article that says every member of the SSR can become an agent of SHIELD with the approval signed by the director, and that’s what he gave me a few minutes ago, when you call to tell you were coming with him.” concludes the guy while smiling even wider than before.

“I didn’t call,” says Fury a bit taken aback.

“I did,” says Melinda behind him, not raising his sight from what she’s reading, “Director Coulson asked me to inform him immediately if the mission was successful.”

Bucky looks at his right to see Fury’s expression, but he can’t tell if that grin is something good or not. Either way he decides to poke a bit more. “Well look at that!” mutters he, “I’m an agent after all…”

Fury doesn’t speak, but Melinda’s ready to blast the fun.

“Not that it means too much this days” says she at his left, her eyes focussed in the file she’s holding and Bucky realizes they’re getting their orders, specially when she asks “Who’s ahead?”

“Agents Triplett and Shaw”, answers Koenig, “They’re already in Vancouver.”

“Then we shouldn’t keep them waiting” says Fury looking at Melinda before he turns to Bucky.

“Just like that? You’re leaving me here?” asks he feeling a bit like a ditchable date.

“Told you we had our hands full,” says Melinda with a little smile.

“Besides I’m sure Agent Koenig here will take good care of you”, says Fury while turning to leave, stopping a moment to look at him aver his dark shades, “Just keep your eyes on the right path, son.”

Agent May gives him a last look too, mix of cold and kindness he understands better than words, watching them leave, feeling the apprehension of being in an unknown place. _Not_ _hostile_ , he tells to himself, _just unknown._

“This way, please…” directs Koenig leading him inside the main building. Bucky follows in silence, his right hand resting carelessly over his thigh, brushing the handle of his favourite knife. Just in case.

The corridor is wide and luminous, with a line of lights guiding the way; the right wall in heavy concrete while the left one is crystal, allowing him to see the tech laboratories inside.

“Where are we going?” asks Bucky as he’s looking around, automatically searching for ways out, cover places, blind spots.

“The dorms, sixth floor”, replies Koenig, turning to pass his identification card to open the crystal door, entering a big hall with a big concrete isle in the middle holding the elevators, “Director Coulson is busy right now, he’ll receive you later, and you’d probably want to take a shower and change your clothes before that.”

Bucky gets inside to confront his own reflection in the lift’s mirrored surface. He’d seen it before but still can’t settle his mind to admit that the guy he’s watching is himself. Still he feels some sort of comforting ease as he can’t recognize himself in that man. It’s not him, not who he was, not the images he saw in the exhibition, not how the world remembers him, and that’s ok. The man he is now is that wreckage and tired looking guy, with dark circles under his eyes, the winter in his skin and his hands dirty.

“Yes, I think I’d like that.”

 

Once in the sixth floor Koenig turns to the opposite side they’d entered, opening the door to the south wing that leads to a warm stance, with soft light and dark carpeted floor. They pass two closed doors, with names outside he presumes are from agents living there, until Koenig opens the third one, allowing him to enter a simple room with two beds, a wooden dresser and a working station close to the window that occupies the whole east wall. Maybe it was a nice room, but the only thing that crosses Bucky’s mind in that moment was how insecure it was, exposed as a weakness in the design, thinking how many targets he’d shot through windows just like that one from the rooftops of buildings.

“Who’s room is this?” asks he, turning to Koenig while he was opening the door to the bathroom and checking the drawers filled with what looks like basic gym clothes and casual man’s wear.

“Right now, its yours”, says the guy, standing in front of him with his mellow smile, “This are destined for agents who come and go between missions, so we provide them with the basics they may need before they move on.”

“And the ones with the names outside?” asks Bucky, opening one of the drawers and peeking boxes with new underwear beside packs of socks in dark colours.

“Well, those are from Director Coulson’s team,” explains he swinging a bit on his feet “They live here and work here... Actually they’d rarely move from here since they arrived…”

That seems to bother Koenig a moment, but didn’t say anything else on the subject. Instead he makes his way to the door after saying “I’ll come for you in twenty minutes” says before he leaves, closing the door on his way out.

And then he was alone again.

Bucky stays still a moment, looking around before he starts to take off his weapons, carefully sorting them by size and use over one of the beds, just like he always do after he’d finish a mission, though he’s not sure if this case counts as that.

Then he took off his heavy leathery body armour, realizing he’d take more damage he thought he did from the previous night, feeling his right side aching a bit for his sore ribcage, with his skin taking some blue and purple shades over the white pale.

He checks the door again, making sure it’s closed, then he takes with him one of the knives, his favourite one, and just after that he enters the shower, resolved in make it as quick as possible, but the warm water and the perfect pressure makes it difficult and Bucky finds himself actually enjoying the moment, closing his eyes to let the water clean his skin and the warmth soothe his aching muscles.

He just decides to get out when he feels a short circuit in his left arm, remembering that maybe his _emergency_ _modifications_ could have damaged more than just what he intended to. Takes a towel and puts it around his waist, then another over his shoulders before he cleans the mirror in front of him, combing his long hair back with his fingers and getting close to look at the uneven stubble he’d managed to grow. Doesn’t take him long to find what he needs to shave it until his face is perfectly clean again, staring at his reflection for a long while, looking for himself in those eyes staring back at him, but he can’t find anything recognizable from what he knew was there before. Neither can he see anything from the Winter Soldier.

It's a strange sensation to feel like he's nothing, yet he's still there; he's still alive in a way he can’t understand.

Who the hell was he, anyway? And who is he now?

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” says he to that face in front of him, staring deeply into his own blue eyes “You are from Brooklyn, New York. You were in the 107th, you were a sniper in the Howling Commandos, you fell into enemy hands, Hydra turn you into his weapon and frost you and brainwashed you for seventy years” continues, looking harder into those eyes, waiting for them to react at what he's saying, but they keep staring back in the same empty anger, “You scape, you turn against them...”

Just then he seems to get conscious of what he's doing, looking down at his hands a moment before he looks back into the mirror, “That’s your mission. You stay focussed on the mission and everything will work out. Make them pay. Make them suffer… You’re safe now.“

Bucky breathes deeply and forces himself to believe what he was saying.

 _I’m safe now,_ he says to himself, grabbing his knife again as tight as he can, _stay focussed in the mission and everything will be ok._

Another deep breathe and leaves the bathroom, checking the drawers more thoroughly. Beside the underwear there’s what seems to be S.H.I.E.L.D. sport wear near S.H.I.E.L.D. semi casual pants and shirts, all in black and white and in four different sizes. By the time Koenig knocks his door again, Bucky’s already dressed with black slacks, white t-shirt and a black hooded sweatshirt, leaving the front zipper open. The only things he kept from his own suit are the boots and his belt, though the motives are beyond comfort and more about his own issues.

He follows Koenig back to the elevator, though the ride this time is just to the seventh floor, which is actually the top one too. After the Triskelion, thinking that this weird looking building with just ten stores at its most is current S.H.I.E.L.D. central headquarters almost makes him feel guilty.

Director Coulson’s entrance space is a luminous large main room with a huge holotable in the middle, three screens occupying one of the walls and a comfortable sitting room with a big L sofa and a couple mini seats around. The main office, on the other hand, is cluttered with little things in exhibition, some of them in glass cases, other over little bases, some of them he recognize as very old devices that Howard Stark was always trying to get the Commandos to use.

In the middle is a man standing in perfect black suit and a gentle smile on his face, extending his hand for him to shake.

“I’m Agent Coulson,” says the guy, shaking his hand with his both and Bucky can see clearly how he’s holding back the emotion “It’s a great honor to personally meet you.”

“Pleasure’s mine” says he in respond, because it’s the right thing to say, then he notices something, “I thought you were Director Coulson.”

The man seems to notice just in that moment what he’d said and shrugs a bit.

“I am, but I’m still trying to get use to that title” tries to excuse himself, genuinely bugged with his mistake, “I’d been using _agent_ for so many years it almost feels like it was my first name.”

Bucky smiles at his comment, understanding what he meant with that and he knows how that is, after all he was so used to be called _Bucky_ back in the days that he didn’t respond when anyone called him _James._ Even Sgt. Barnes felt strange then sometimes.

Then he just didn’t have a name. He was just _Soldier_.

And he hates that.

Still he keeps his empty smile while looking around a bit more, “You have really interesting things here…” says while his eyes wonders over a shelf with old weapons “… Is that a Linder Conversion rifle? Holly cow, it’s beautiful…” mutters Bucky feeling a little urge in his right hand to get it from the wall, but he keeps it under control “And a lot of Stark’s junk…”

“It’s _vintage_ ”, says Coulson, calling his attention again and making Bucky turn to him, studying his face to check if he’d hurt any feelings with his stupid tongue, but not finding anything strange at first sight.

“I’m a big fan of the old days…” adds the director finally and Bucky thinks that’s the perfect way out.

“I miss them too…” says he, though his voice lacks from any trace of actual feelings. He doesn’t really misses the old days, he just misses his old life, the one he lost when he shipped to England for the first time.

He rather not think about that and better gets to know what’s the plan for him.

“So… How will this go?” asks Bucky after a long exhale, looking at Coulson while keeping his distance from him.

“Agent May informed me you need some assistance before we can start” begins the man taking a step back until he sits over the desk table in a very natural way, leaving his hands over his lap and keeping the placid smile “So I’m waking up my team to brief them with your file, then they can go ahead with your tuning up.”

“My file?” Bucky furrows a bit his forehead, some stress lines crossing between his brows, “Your team have _my file_?”

“Not all of it” assures him Coulson with the same gentle smile that makes him want to trust what he’s saying, “I just gave them access to your technical and medical history, so they can start working with…”

But still he can’t let go the issue so easily “… Wait!” Bucky interrupts before he can finish his explanation “How did they-- How did _you_ get my file?”

As far as he knows, Hydra didn’t have any of that in a place where any person or hacktivist could get in easily, keeping everything in extremely secure facilities back in Europe as secret as possible.

The smile in Coulson’s face grows bigger, brightening up with proud.

“Agent Romanoff gave us a copy,” says he, and Bucky thinks he’s supposed to know who this agent is, but as had been happening since the past night, he barely have any idea with who he’s dealing.

So he gets suspicious.

“And how did _that agent_ get it?” asks he keeping the distance, his right hand going instinctively to his thigh, remembering just then that he wasn’t carrying his knife. Not there at least.

“She’s very good”, says Coulson while shrugging a bit, “I’d say she’s actually one of the best we still have. Beside she took it a bit personal, after all you tried to kill her twice…”

Bucky looks a bit thrown off, glancing down a bit while he tries to remember “The woman… Red hair?” asks he while a blurry image of red hair and green eyes gets mixed with soft words in russian.

“Yes, Natasha Romanoff…” says Coulson, staring at him a bit worry “Though she didn’t actually do it for us. She got that file because Captain America asked her to.”

Well, that was a useful piece of information he was just getting to know.

Bucky looks back at the director with his eyes wide open in surprise. So Steve had his file. That might explain a bit better how did he knew where to start looking after him, but that also meant…

_He knows._

He shut his mouth and bite his lips, clenching his jaw and tightening his right fist, stopping himself when his left arm makes a clunking noise.

“I thought you should know about that,” continues Coulson with the same plain calmly voice, “After all it’s your personal information and now, as a level 7 agent, you should know who has access to it and decide from now on who won’t.”

Bucky forces himself to breathe normally, even when he feels it’s getting harder, stretching his hand and faking a smile, but as much as he tries he can’t keep his eyes looking straight at the director while he speaks.

Coulson is about to say something else when he hears some movement outside. Immediately Bucky stands in alert, taking his right hand to his back in a quick automatic movement, just to be hushed by the director. “It’s ok, it’s just the kids from the team” says he holding his hand in the air but low, in a clear gesture to calm him down, “I send them a message to come up here to be briefed about their new assignments, guess it’s time for you to meet them…”

Bucky takes his hand from his back, where his knife is carefully attached to his belt, breathing slowly and staring sceptic back at him.

“I’m sure it’s not necessary to tell you it’s better to keep your information restricted to a few,” continues Coulson, “Though if you want to, this group is very tight and reliable, it’s ok if you decide to talk to them about it, if you want to…”

“Should I?” asks he, finally looking back at the director a bit more bold than before, “After everything that happened with S.H.I.E.L.D., having a Hydra waste like me might be the last thing they’d like to have near…”

But Coulson didn’t seem to take that as a problem.

“One of our team members was a dormant Hydra double agent,” says he, striking Bucky a bit because his smile turned into a strange hurt grin, “We all trusted him, treated him like one of us, share profound bounds with him and he betray us” concludes with the same tone in his voice, though is a flicker in his eyes what betrays how he’s really feeling about what he’s saying “You met agent Koenig earlier, his brother was one of this guy’s victims. Also he tried to kill two more from our team, one of them is now in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.”

Bucky knows he’d done worst, but it’s not a competition. Beside, for what he can recall, he never worked as a double agent willingly and he was never asked to get involved with his victims before back-stabbing them.

“You, on the other hand” continues Coulson, standing and taking a couple of folders while getting a bit closer, “You were used against your will and managed to get away from Hydra. And now you’re joining us to fight against them “resumes he what he’d done in a way it almost sounds like something heroic when it was just instinct and revenge, nothing to be proud of. “You won’t scare them, you will give them hope” says Coulson with his hand at the doorknob before he opens the door to let them out of the office and back into the meeting room.

 _Hope_ , he repeats to himself before he walks behind the director to find three kids in their pajamas, two girls and a boy in a wheelchair, who he assumes is the one Coulson was talking before. They look so young he feels strange having to trust these children with his issues. Are they really the best S.H.I.E.L.D. has in function right now?

But then, while he stands in a resting position holding his hands on his front, he remembers the weird detail that he’s not _really_ almost a hundred years old, that he should be closer to their ages than the directors.

Still, the way the guy seems to get thrilled when he sees his metal hand does look like a child watching his favourite toy in a showcase, and the blush that appears in the faces of the girls make them look like teenagers while one tries to tidy up her shirt and the other straightens her messy hair while glancing self-consciously at him.

“Sir… I thought this was going to be just a briefing before breakfast”, says the first girl with a charming british accent that brings him back immediately to the London girls, back at the leave days in the war.

“That’s exactly what this is, Simmons”, says Coulson standing next to Bucky.

“Still you could have warn us, _AC_ ”, says the other girl, still trying to comb his hair with her fingers.

“Fitz, Simmons and Skye” introduces the director, motioning each of them while saying their names “This is Agent Barnes.”

 _Agent Barnes,_ repeats Bucky in his head while he nods as greet.

“From now on he’ll be your field man in the Lukin case,“ continues Coulson while handling one folder to the british girl and the other one to the guy “He’s an expert marksman and had taken down already five Hydra facilities by himself, Fitz will take care of the equipment and the _asset_ and Simmons will be in charge of the medical…”

“… and, of course, there’s nothing for me” says the other girl, who was still holding her hands in high waiting for a folder too, but she didn’t get any, “You know I’m good at stuff too, right?” asks she and Bucky thinks that he likes her.

“Your work will start from now on, Skye” says Coulson in response, “You’ll be working hand in hand with Barnes, taking what you can of intel from the facilities we find and trying to penetrate their systems the way you did with Cybertek”, informs the director, and the grin in the girl’s face turns into an excited smile.

“Yes sir…” says she enthusiastic, making Coulson chuckle a bit, almost unnoticeable.

“I think you better start with Simmons to check your vitals before we move to mech…” starts the director again but the guy raises his eyes from the documents and points at Bucky’s arm.

“Maybe we can work that at the same time in the lab” says Fitz excited, though it’s pretty obvious he has trouble speaking, beside his accent makes it even harder to understand, “So I can get a good look at that sooner…”

It’s hard but Bucky’d had worst trying to understand drunk frenchies back in the days, “If it’s no problem, it’s ok with me”, says he looking at both scientist kids, specially the girl who he thinks should be the one deciding how she’d like to do her job.

“Of course, sir” says Simmons, “Ehmm… I’m sorry, agent Barnes?” continues a bit fidgety, “What was your name again?”

Bucky opens his mouth to answer, but is Coulson who answers first.

“He’s Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes.”

Just a second of silence before Skye giggles.

“Like Bucky Barnes? Captain America’s…”

“Please don’t say sidekick…” burst he before she can finish.

“I… wasn’t going to... say… that…“ says Skye, though she looks like that was exactly what she was going to say.

Still, it's Coulson again who breaks the news for his team, saving him from speak.

“That’s because he _is_ Bucky Barnes” says the director with the most serious voice he’d listen from him this far “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes from the Howling Commandos, member of the old SSR and now and Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Again there's silence and shock in the kids’ faces. Until they explode.

“…WHAT?!... But how is that…”

“Rubbish… No, no way… That’s impossible”

“… No, no way… How can that be even…”

They all start to question at the same time until Coulson raises his hands to calm them. “Guys, please…” says he, “It’s not like it’s the first time you’d seen someone who has returned from death…”

And with that they seem to accept it better, though the one with the question in his face is now Bucky, turning to look at him, expecting some kind of input about that.

“Let’s say we’d had a share of cases of agents being dead and coming back to life”, says Coulson as an explanation, “Myself included”.

Bucky just nods slowly, reminding that just a few hours ago he’d met another who was supposed to be dead but wasn’t.

“Don’t say…” mutters he making clear the little bit of sarcasm in his voice.

 

After that Coulson sends everyone to start with their assignments before he gets back into his office.  
It’s Fitz who finally guides him to the second floor after leaving the girls in the sixth so they can ‘ _change into proper outfit’._

Instead of going directly to the labs the guy leads him to a cafeteria, a luminous and sunny place with a big open kitchen and a couple of tables ready with breakfast served, where the smell of eggs and bacon smacks him in the face with decades of yearning. Just then he realizes he hasn’t eat anything since the last day, so he takes a plate and grabs what he can find on his way to the table.

But once he’s already set, Fitz starts with the questions. And minutes later the couple of girls joins too.

Bucky doesn’t want to talk, but he soon finds out it’s not really necessary, after he mentions Hydra and what they did to him, without get into any detail, the three of them seem to understand that’s not a subject to talk about.

The air get’s tense after that and he feels it. He knows the damage they suffered, he can see they’re just starting to mend their wounds and rebuild their lives, just as they’re rebuilding that whole organization. They’re good people, he can tell they’re good people, but that’s exactly what frightens he: The good ones are always the first to fall.

“So...” says Skye trying to relieve the atmosphere “Basically you missed seventy years of pop culture…”

“… I’m sure that’s not the most important thing he’d been missing…” says Simmons after sip her tea.

“Right” agrees Fitz by her side “Man in the moon, fall of the Berlin wall, the bomb in Hiroshima…”

“Polymerase chain reaction, helical structure of DNA, first draft of the human genome” adds Simmons immediately “ _AND_ The Beatles!”

“Yes, _and_ The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd…”

“And Queen…”

It was like they took turns to complete what the other was saying, but it was just confusing for Bucky who’d lost it in the fall of Berlin’s wall.

“… What?”

Skye gives him a bagel with a smile, “Don’t worry, you’ll catch up” says she like it would be simple and not the cause of anxiety he was starting to feel “Good part is that you saved yourself from Disco.”

That sounds like a pun so Bucky manages to smile, trying really hard to catch up with everything they’re saying, no matter how confusing it might sound, because it’s better that then speak about himself, because he doesn’t want to think about how anxious he was getting, how his stomach is starting to ache and his muscles are so tense he’s afraid he’d start to tremble in any second.

“Fitz! Stop poking agent Barnes’ hand!” mutter Simmons after the other guy tries to touch the metal fingers resting still over the table.

“It’s ok” says he, realizing he can’t move them separately anymore, meaning the failure is getting worst, “And please, just call me Bucky.”

“What about Agent Bucky?” asks Skye beside him tentatively with a mischievous grin on her mouth.

“Just Bucky.”

Still Simmons calls him _Agent Barnes_ when she announces it’s time to move to the labs to start with the procedures.

That simple word was a trigger enough to make him feel on the edge, but he manages to conceal it and follows them to the second basement, where the lack of sunlight was poorly compensated with white cold lights that makes the floor seems cold and desolate.

But after everything he’d been through the past hours, it was the vision of the lab what finally breaks his strength.

“… We are just going to… Agent Barnes? Are you ok?”

It’s not just the cold and antiseptic ambient, or the machines around a stretcher and table; it was the smell of medications and drugs and the noise of electricity he feels going through the air.

Bucky stands by the door, unable to move, unable to breath, feeling the pressure in his chest and some weakness in his legs, having to lean on the doorframe to not fall.

“…Bucky?” asks Skye by his side, trying to get closer just to make him snap, pushing her incoming hand, realizing too late what he was doing.

“I’m sorry…” mutters, though his voice comes out like a growl.

He tries to calm himself down, tries really hard to convince himself that its safe, that everything’s fine, tries very hard to convince his body to keep breathing and his mind that nobody’s going to hurt him anymore, but he just can’t.

“I… Don’t…” whimpers he finally, taking a few steps back and getting out of there, “Just… I need a moment…”

Bucky doesn’t look back, doesn’t know if they listened or even if they understood, and he couldn’t care less.

He remembers the path to the bathroom, the one next to the elevator when they get to the basement, enters and shuts himself up inside a cubicle.

Tries to breathe deeply, but is futile and the images starts to flood his mind.

The scientists taking him out of the cryo, that was the same sensation he was feeling, when he had to cough out the liquid they use to fill his lungs while frozen, then the needles tearing his skin and the drugs running through his system to reactivate it quicker, the numbness of his brain and the terrible fear those first hours meant, the terror of not knowing who he was, what were they doing to him, not even being able to understand if all that was real or not, if _he_ was real or not.

And then the chair, with the tights bindings around his body, the unbearable sound of the electric shock waves burning through his brain, the taste of metal in his mouth and the smell…

He ends up throwing up explosively, bending himself over the toilet, trembling uncontrollably during the painful process.

After a while he cleans his mouth with paper and his eyes with his hand, trying to stop sobbing like a child before someone finds him there.

“ _It’s ok… It’s ok… It’s going to be ok,_ ” he mutters to himself, trying to convince his own scared mind to believe in something he couldn’t really believe in, but he has to “ _I’m safe here… I’m safe here… It’s going to be ok… They won’t find me… I’m safe here… I’m safe…_ “ and that was his mantra for a long while, keeping his eyes shut and his hand pressing his ears to keep the sound away, curled in that cubicle until he could breathe normally again.

He’d had four days without this kind of incidents.

Now Bucky has to scratch that and put his counter back to zero.

 

 

 


	3. Prodigy

 

 

 

\--- 

The first three days were the hardest.

The last time Bucky was around so many people treating him like a person, he was running through the Alps chasing Nazis back in the 40’s, so to begin with, he had to adapt as quickly as he could to understand everything that was going on around him. Good for him he’d always been a survivor.

 

Director Coulson tried his best to hide his excitement the first day he was there, but when the night came he invited him to his office to share a bottle of whisky. Bucky thought maybe he wanted to talk about some serious issues, about the mission, about HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. and the future so obscure they had in front of them now, but instead of that the talking was about the golden years of the SSR, the heroic stories of the Howling Commandos, the legacy they left for his generation, so many decades after, and how much he admired him, his loyalty and courage, and how those virtues were taught with his story as an example to the cadets in the academies.

Bucky thought he would get sick.

It was also Coulson who told him the details of Captains America’s fall, when he crash-landed the Red Skull’s plane into the Arctic to save New York, how the world mourned the first super hero and then moved on, but he put some particular accent later, when he told him how they found him buried in the ice, how they defrosted him and, after that, how the legend was reborn, but also the struggle he had to go through to adjust to this strange new world, leaving him a sour taste in his mouth.

“I wasn’t close to him the last few years. Director Fury gave the order that none of the Avengers should ever know I was alive, so I couldn’t see it with my own eyes”, said the director, sitting in front of him with the same first glass of whisky while Bucky was already on his sixth, “But I read the reports. And they all said that Captain Rogers was well adapted to his new life and he was an exceptional agent, though I’m sure that shouldn’t surprise you at all.”

“It does, actually”, said Bucky, smiling, “Steve was never good following orders blindly from anyone. He was always the same reckless jerk who’d fight alone against the world for what he believes it’s the truth.”

“That’s the reason he put those helicarriers down in DC.”

It was also the reason why Bucky was there and not dead, because he had fought for him, because he’d saved him from himself, just like he always saved him from himself from the very first day they met.

But that was something he would have never shared with the director.

Speak with him was nice, like speak with a loving uncle who was so proud of his nephew’s triumphs that he couldn’t see past them and into the other things he’d done. And every time he tried to bring the subject up, every single time Coulson stopped. “It’s in the past, Barnes. You can look back at that anytime and it’ll still be there, exactly the same. It’ll still hurt the same too because you can’t change it… But you can make it better; you can heal yourself and mend somehow the damage, balance the scales until you get enough good to compensate for all the wrongs.”

That was exactly his reason to stay there.

 

Coulson was just the head of the group of people who were now hovering around him all the time, but he managed to get well with the rest of the team too.

Jemma was the hardest, since she was so extremely passionate about every single test she thought could be done to him, she usually forgot to explain him what they were mean for in a way he could understand, though when she asked if she could take a sample of tissue of him to analyse the difference between his grown development during the early twentieth century compared to this days, he thought it was the right time to put a stop to her scientific curiosity with a kind “I’d rather not let you cut me into pieces, but I can tell you anything you ask me.” After that and maybe trying to make amends, she gave him some pills to control his anxiety. He had no heart to tell her that he wouldn’t use them and that they probably wouldn’t even work on him, but he thanked her anyway.

The results of his tests were the other issue they both had to face, and that they choose to share exclusively with director Coulson.

It wasn’t just the traces of some weird kinds of drugs that HYDRA’d been giving to him for decades, which withdrawal could have explain his terrible first month after he went rouge and escaped from his handlers, with some days he had totally lost in his memory and that were mostly delusions and pain. There was also something else attached to his cells, something that was so tightly merged within him that Simmons was sure it was already incorporated in his DNA. Problem was she couldn’t figure out what that thing was, but for all that he knew, it was probably Zola’s own recipe of the super soldier serum.

 

Then there was Fitz, whose interest in his arm became an obsession once he figured out how it was attached at his nervous system, thinking he could use that information to build his own system of exoskeleton to let him walk normally again.

At first it was fun to spend the hours with him, with his tales about robots, monkeys and machines, things he could understand better than chemistry or biology, and that he was actually really interested into them too. Fitz instructed him in a very entertaining way to most of the modern technology he could handle in such a short time and some basics on how to use them too, specially the ones that he’d design himself. In return, Bucky got to tell him about the weird devices that the Red Skull used back in the days, how they were powered by this strange alien energy source he get to knew very well while he was a prisoner of war, forced to work in one of his factories; also he get to talk about the sleeper they’d found in Bavaria later and the absurd amount of stuffs that Howard Stark was always creating for them, learning that most of those things he’d thought back then were just pieces of junk, were in deed the pillars of modern warfare and gadgets.

Fitz was this smiling friendly guy during the first two days, but at the third day something happened with him that everything changed. He didn’t wanted to talk about it, he didn’t let him ask anything either, Bucky was supposed to just stay still and let him work, something that turned into a painful experience, not just physically but also at his soul, because watch this guy try his best to get his cybernetic limb to work perfectly again, having himself so many problems with his own body, was simply heart breaking, and all he could think was his little sunshine trying so hard to be brave and tough when his own body was a cage. So much that after a few hours, when he finally said he was almost ready, Bucky slipped and said _‘thank you, Stevie’_.

Fitz didn’t seem to care.

 

It was Skye the next day who told him a bit more about the Fitz-Simmons dynamics and how they changed since their accident, though call it that way to the murder attempt they both were victims was minimizing too much of the deal.

“Think of them as the cute couple of friends you always ship together” said she then, after he’d ask if she knew what was wrong with Fitz, “But they’re too awkward and emotionally insecure to ever make the first move, so they just stay as friends until one of them starts to look around, and then things gets weird…”

He understood what she meant, or at least he thought so.

And definitely it was none of his business.

Skye was a soft breeze of air most of the time, especially after he’d spent the morning with one of the two scientists, during those first days in the Playground. She had the extraordinary advantage of a bullet proof optimism, a bright clever mind and a never ending source of entertaining stories from the modern world, from the most important people’s revolutions he’d miss during his frozen years, to the most stupidly amazing videos of animals doing crazy things. The hours with her were at the beginning the highlights of his day, the only moment he felt he wasn’t being treated like a time bomb, maybe because she didn’t knew what the others did read about him. Or maybe, as he wanted to believe and she expressed a couple of times, it was just because she liked him.

The task they were supposed to do together was gather every piece of information they could get about HYDRA and how to connect that to Lukin’s own agenda. It wasn’t easy, not because of the job itself, but for the memories he had to bleed to remember anything that might be useful for them. A name, a place, a date, anything that they could track and then hunt down inside the little pieces of information that Skye could gather around the web, something he was sure had to be some sort of superpower because, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t understand a single line of what she was always writing on her laptop.

Even with that he managed to learn a few things, not as much as he would have like, but enough to be useful if the mission required for him to crack into a system, something he knew was the key in that whole operation.

 

Things started to get better at the fourth day, when Agent May returned from her mission with another guy, the one he would get to like better, specially after he learnt the detail he was the grandson of Gabe Jones.

“I’m Antoine Triplett, but Trip is ok.”

Finally he could hang out with someone who seemed to speak his own language, not just about strategies, guns and the complexities of choosing wisely how to kill a man having so many possibilities, but also he knew so much about his grandfather that was just bullshit, that tell him some true stories was his own way to honor his memory.

“What do you mean you don’t know about his three days lost near Berne with Dernier and two double agents? Well, bet he wouldn’t want your grandma to know that kind of shits… But the hell I would let his legend be forgotten and I’m sure he’d have liked to brag about this.”

It was nice tell the truth behind the entire bleached out version the newsreels and the historians had managed to portray of what really happened back then. It wasn’t the flaming flag behind them in every heroic step they take against the enemies; it wasn’t the virtuous march through the countryside killing Nazis with the power of righteousness and freedom. It was dirty, and bloody and freezing, and most of the time it was far from virtuous or righteous. It was war and it wasn’t beautiful, but it had a sort of clarity he yearned for now it was over.

 

His first mission was the fifth day.

It started early in the morning and, even nobody said a thing, he knew it was more like a test, to see if he could do the things that were expected from him to do but under the new circumstances. He also knew that it wasn’t necessary all the company, it was just a simple base with no real danger inside, something he would have take down alone in a few minutes, but he was assigned to go with Trip, May and Agent Shaw anyway.

The first part was to visit the armory were Fitz, now back to his normal cheerful self, was eager to show off his toys.

“Right term is high tech hardware”, said he while giving Bucky a new rifle that fitted him like a glove.

“Well, your _high tech hardware_ feels like Christmas to me” said he before he started to take everything he could hang on each holster his new reinforced uniform had.

The mission was simple: storm the base, infiltrate their systems with Skye’s trojan, capture the brains and the goons, hopefully without casualties so S.H.I.E.L.D. could offer them as a good intentions gift to the authorities, and then return to the headquarters avoiding sightings.

For Bucky it was a almost like a joke, but he understood that what really mattered was his performance with the team, the achievement of the exact objectives and, of course, that he wouldn’t drift away or turn against them. He was sure that the personal mission of Melinda was precisely achieve that part, putting him down again if it was necessary.

It was close to ten am when they reached the facility, a two stores building in the industrial periphery and, just as he expected, everything worked smoothly perfect. Trip and Shaw took the first floor, he and May the second and managed to capture a couple of scientists in the middle of their work, the main reason why they’d choose that hour to assault that base.

It wasn’t really a laboratory; it was more like a software development facility, something that Skye confirmed later when they got to see the information they’d gather.

“I think Fitz will really like this” said she while showing in the main screen what she was finding “They’re not just after the new super soldier serum, they’re also building drones.”

 

The next missions varied from easy and good to miserable pieces of hell, but at least he was working just with Trip by his side and things usually went better and faster that way.

They find out about a project called _‘Prodigy’_ , but beside the name, that it had test subjects moving from one facility to another and that it didn’t seem to work because the results were always filed as ‘failure’, they didn’t get to know too much about it.

The rest was just weapons developers and factories, sometimes they were big places, sometimes just like the first one, most of them lost in forgotten country roads or at the suburbs of random cities, where nothing happens and no one was there to notice what was going on until the authorities appeared.

He was back in his own game and it felt good, doing what he’d learn to do better than anyone, but this time against the ones who trained him. He was biting the hand of the master and it tastes like sweet revenge.

 

The only mission that got into him was one in Indiana.

It was the second week and third day, just another assault to a laboratory. They had every piece of information they could gather from the previous base, beside it seemed to be more like a warehouse than a scientific research place.

Thing is, it actually was.

After they stormed in and managed to put down every guard, Bucky was supposed to install the tracker program in the servers, just like he’d been told and trained to do, but once in the main lab he found himself staring at a cryonic container, same as the one he was put on to be frozen for decades.

Then he lost it.

When Trip took him out of his own irrational state, he got to see how he’d destroyed that thing with his own hands, though his flesh one was bleeding, and trembling just like the rest of his body.

He didn’t wanted to talk about that with Trip, neither with anyone else that day.

Later that night, when he thought nobody would still be awake, he sneaked to the bar to pour himself a couple of whisky shots. He had already emptied three parts of the bottle when Melinda appeared in front of him, taking a glass and pouring herself a shot too.

“You ok?”

“Can’t sleep”, said he, keeping his eyes down to not show how lost his sight was.

“Does this help?”

“… Sometimes”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No… Not really.”

“Ok“, said she, taking the seat with a graceful movement, “Mind the company?”

“Would be my pleasure, ma’am.”

The second bottle of whisky was emptied close to the sunrise. They didn’t talked too much, mainly about random things and stupid comments of the normal life in the Playground, but before she went to her own room, Melinda took Bucky’s hand and held it tight for a moment. It was a silent comfort he responded with just a soft smile cause in that moment he couldn’t manage to express anything better.

 

Leaving aside the missions and after the first week, the days in the Playground were never boring.

The kids thought it was their personal duty to introduce Bucky to this brave new world and they all took turns to show him what they thought were the most important things he definitely needed to know.

It started with long afternoons watching movies in the conference room, with microwaved popcorn and tiny chocolate bites. He couldn’t remember them all after the fifth day of that program. Sometimes he snoozed during long boring dialogs or simply when the movie just couldn’t catch his attention from the beginning. He found out it happened mostly with the ones from the sixties and seventies, the classics the kids called them. He felt pretty nostalgic when they call _Casablanca_ a piece of filmography history and tried very hard to hide his excitement when they told him there was an movie adaptation of _The Hobbit_ , but mostly when he found out there were also a trilogy of books as its sequel.

The highlight of those afternoons was when they make him watch _The Empire Strikes Back_.

“… WHAT?!... No fucking way…” said he in total shock when the main plot twist was revealed, “What the hell are you doing?” asked he in the middle of the laughs at Skye, holding his camera phone to him.

“You have no idea how precious this is…”

It was a good thing he started to laugh too and for a moment he forgot about the movie, that way the next scene of the fall didn’t get into him as it would have.

Music was another issue, especially for Jemma who took it as a personal responsibility to present him with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and many others british bands that he felt they all sound the same but didn’t have the heart to tell her so; he sat with her and Fitz, listening to all of their music and asking what came into his mind while they chat about the importance of them and Skye added constantly every detail she could find about their influence in society.

“You wanna know the other side of the story?” asked Trip later that night, taking him to his room to show him the black music from the forties to the present day.

There was jazz and blues and the sounds he could relate so much from his own youth, growing and changing and taking new different rhythms, from Motown to Ella Fitzgerald and from Billy Holliday to Michael Jackson.

“Now this woman, this is a national treasure”, said Trip before he showed him Beyonce. Bucky didn’t like the music that much, but he also didn’t care. He just agreed with him she was a national treasure and keep watching the videos until there was one, a live presentation in a tribute to another singer, where he saw a familiar face sitting right beside the president from that time, first row and smiling.

“What’s Alexander Pierce doing there?”

After that the topic changed back into missions and strategies and taking down what was left of HYDRA while the playlist kept rolling as a soundtrack of their plans.

 

After the second week it was more like a cultural exchange.

While Bucky started to use ‘ _hella’_ and spell ‘ _the fuck’_ in a different accent, the kids started to say ‘ _that’s above my pay grade’_ when they didn’t wanted to do something or ‘ _killer-diller’_ when something was good. At the beginning Bucky thought they were making fun of him, but when even May started to say “ _swell’,_ he understood it was just them getting used to each other.

“They wouldn’t laugh at you, Barnes”, said to him Coulson in one of their late night talks, the few times he got to see the director outside of official matters, since he was most of the time locked inside his own office and only agent Koenig seemed to be allowed to enter, “They look up to you. We all do.”

As always Bucky just managed to force a smile and didn’t say a word. He’d never understood why would anyone admire him when there was nothing there to cherish.

 

 

After the third week, most of his days starts with an hour or two of sparring in the gym, sometimes with one of the field agents, mostly with Trip, who was gaining a lot of experience in short time with their work out. They’d already finished their practice when Skye calls them.

They come into the conference room, still wearing their tight gym clothes and sweating from the exercise. A towel hangs from Trips neck as he walks in first, while some threads of hair had fell from the tiny bun Bucky has in his head on, pulling them back as he follows.

“Stop taking pictures of us”, says he to Skye, looking at the camera she was holding at them, a habit she was getting used to.

“You know Barnes’ existence is still a secret we should keep, right?” asks Trip, stretching out his hand to grab Skye’s phone, though she puts it down quicker.

“Don’t worry, I won’t post them on my Instagram… Yet”, says she with a cheeky smile, opening in the main screen the files she was looking at before they came in, “So… a bun?” asks she in the meantime.

Bucky smiles a bit, “Keeps my hair off my eyes…”

“You could also just cut it off, you know?” says Trip looking at him before he turns again at the main screen.

“Nah… I kind of like it this way”, says Bucky with a little shrug.  
He likes how he doesn’t look anything like the man he was in the old pictures, a completely different person, just the way he actually feels. He can keep distance from the memory, the legend that was built after his figure, and be that strange creature he was learning to be now, not a monster anymore but still not completely human yet.

“Well, it does look great on you”, adds Skye turning to him and looking a moment at his face before she continues rambling, “Not that’s much of a merit considering you being so…” she just motions at him whole, ending in an awkward grin “… Why are you still listening to me?”

Trip chuckles with her clumsy look “Because we are waiting for what you have to show us, Mary Sue.”

“Why did I ever tell you about that?” asks she rolling her eyes and playing on the main screen the footage of a security camera of a lab, with three big guys were sitting in in the middle, each one of them with tubes injecting a bluish liquid in their veins. One of them looks familiar to Bucky, getting closer to watch it better.

“I know that guy…” says he, pointing at the one in the middle.

“Me too…” says Trip also looking at him, “But I’m not sure from where…”

“That’s because he’s a member of S.T.R.I.K.E.” says Skye holding a tablet in her hand to make a close up to the guy’s face, “Or was…”

“Jack Rollins” says Trip, staring at him.

“You know him?”

“Not really, just by name and I saw him a couple of times around” says the agent, “He was always with Brock Rumlow.”

“Yes… I remember that too”, says Bucky frowning a little while he recalls some of his own memories, “They were Pierce’s personal guards, though this one was a lower rank… What are they giving to him?”

“That’s the _Prodigy serum_ ” says Skye, fast forwarding the recording until the man at Rollin’s left starts to convulse violently and his skin starts to burst into blisters, causing the panic between the scientists, “And that’s what happens when it doesn’t work.”

The record stops there and the next piece is the same place but without the equipment and the staff, just as they found it when they stormed that base.

“They moved everything before we got there”, points Bucky to the obvious, “That’s why we only found the weapons…”

“Exactly” says the girl, but instead of share the negativism, she was smiling “But you did something good in there anyway.”

“What’s that?”

“We infiltrate their security system, well, at least some of it”, says she before the main screen turned into a mosaic with fifteen different security cameras streaming directly to them, “I’d counted four facilities here… Who’s the best?” asks Skye before she raises his fist to them, getting the first fist-bump from Bucky.

“You are the fucking best, Mary Sue” teases he, but she grins back.

“Stop calling me that or I won’t share with you the secret post credit scene”, threats she, though after the confused look in Bucky’s face and the wonder in Trip’s, she just plays it on, “Ok, ok… Here’s the footage of your _boyfriend_ arriving at the base from last night.”

Bucky looks at the screen and there he was: Walking inside that building before the police, just a few minutes after he and Trip left.

_Steve..._

He lost his smile immediately, also he skipped a few breaths and when he notices he let go a deep sigh, looking away from the sunshine.

“Still not ready to face him?” asks Skye, getting closer until she puts her hand over his right shoulder.

“Nope…” answers he before he tightens his lips.

“You may have to reconsider that, Buck” says Trip, standing next to him too, “He’s getting closer.”

Bucky looks at both of them, takes a deep breathe and decides it’s enough.

“I don’t want to discuss this”, says he firmly, looking back at the screen with his arms crossed over his chest, “If we have access to their security system now, we should move fast before they notice us. So, tell me what do we have from the others facilities and when can we attack them.”

 

Keep his head on his mission always works as the best way to keep Steve out of his thoughts, especially when he knew he was really getting closer.

They finally selected two bases from the ones they were spying, one in North Dakota and the other in Nevada. The first one looked like a lab or a training facility, probably related with the _Prodigy_ program, and Melinda choose it for her and agent Shaw, leaving the one that looked like a weapons deposit for Bucky and Trip, being that the one they were expecting to go after they’d seen a huge shipload of enormous sealed boxes, and they immediately started to bet on what was on them. Bucky said it was pieces from a bigger weapon while Trip took his chance by saying they were vehicles.

 

It’s close to midnight when they start the mission, boarding the quinjet after a quick rock-paper-scissors game to see who would be the pilot and who would get the action. Bucky wins. The three times they play.

Just five minutes before they arrive, Skye calls.

“Guys, we have a huge problem… No pun intended.”

The screen shows the facility they were heading to, dark and without any visible window, thick concrete walls in a labyrinth of hallways and empty rooms, and in the last one of them there is a man with a shield, fighting three drones and not taking the winning part of it. Worst of all, from the boxes they’d seen before and were betting on what was inside, suddenly burst free another five drones, even bigger and loaded.

That’s how the storm mission turns into a rescue one.

“… Damn it, Steve!”

“Buck! Where…?” tries to ask Trip but Bucky was already gone, prepping himself at the cargo space.

“Get me as close as you can”, orders he while taking out the toys ( _it's high tech hardware!_ ) that Fritz prepared for this kind of setbacks, “Shoot the timers and fire them when we get back.”

“What? But we’re supposed to…”

“DID I FUCKIN’ STUTTER?” shouts he over the noise of the air while he opens the gate “WE BLOW THAT SHIT NOW!”

He jumps when they’re close enough, no chute needed, rolling over the roof as he lands, sprinting to the entrance and running through the hallways, listening in the distance the well known sound of a ruthless battle. _Straight, left, left, right, left, up… SHIT!_ He shots two times to the drones in front of him, not regular bullets but Fitz marvellous creation that froze the machines movements while he pass through them, running with his mind set in only one thing, the only one that had always mattered.

He speeds up the last yards until he finds the source of the explosions, dodging a blast of bullets with a spin in the air, landing in the middle of three drones, almost fifteen feet tall and heavily armed.

Just a split of a second and he could glimpse at the corner of his eye the star-spangled uniform getting crushed against the concrete floor by a huge fist of iron, the shield laying just feet away from him. At the other side he had two more drones coming for him.

He could engage in a fight with them, but he knew he was not match for those machines and they really have no time for fun, pulling from his backpack a long staff and spiking it down with his left hand, cracking the floor to secure it there.

“STAY DOWN!” yells to Steve the moment before he shots, releasing an EMP wave design exclusively for that kind of systems, another amazing creation of Fitz after he robbed the original software design a week before, forcing the operative system of the drones to a slow restart. That means they have a few seconds, first of them he uses to leave an explosive charge next to the staff.

The EMP wasn’t totally harmless for Bucky though, feeling his metal arm loosing reaction immediately as he gets up and grabs the shield on his way, kneeling next to Steve, watching him opening his blue eyes to look at him lost.

“You _really_ like getting punched…” mutters Bucky as he pulls Steve up with the strength he feels was gaining again, passing his arm over his shoulders to carry him out if necessary.

“B-Bucky...?”, groans Steve by his side, standing slowly and apparently lightheaded, receiving his shield back still confused, “I thought… I thought you were…”

“Oh hell no! We are not doing that right now!” Bucky stops him right there, holding him tight and carrying him out from that place, passing through the drones that were already restarting their systems, taking him to the hallway as fast as he can, “This place’s about to blow, we have to get out of here…”

As soon as he says that the explosions starts behind them, blowing the place they’d just left. Steve starts to move on his own, following him without any hesitation through the hallways until they’re outside of the building and a blast of machine guns fires over their heads, Bucky raising his left arm immediately as a protection just to be covered by the shield, moment he used to look up and see the quinjet descending and aiming to the base.

“HOLD ON TIGHT!” screams Bucky, shooting his zip-line gun with his left while taking Steve’s waist with his right, pulling the cable to soar them both back to the plane while two missiles passed roaring over them, crushing the building to rise a huge blast behind them.

Bucky swings a second once they’re at the quinjet gate, throwing Steve first and then himself in, rolling inside over the hard metallic surface with a loud groan for the pain of the ungraceful landing.

“… damn…” whines Bucky still panting heavily, feeling his muscles itching with the burst of adrenaline still running through them.

He tries to move, but before he can put his hand on the floor to pull himself up, he feels a strong hold on his right shoulder, pushing him back and pinning him against the floor. When he opens his eyes again he sees Steve over him, gripping him down and with his face close to his, contorted in a furious grin while asking the last question Bucky would have expected from him.

“Who the hell are you?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading.  
> For your entertainment, the video Trip and Bucky watched was [this](http://youtu.be/5ZVyUOQZXic) where you can see Pierce in the 0:15. It was actually that coincidence what brought out the rest of the scene.  
> I'm not really good with this but I guess that's ok.  
> Now, If you want to ask anything beside or just prompt me with updates, just [go to my Tumblr](http://mylifeaspeach.tumblr.com/).


	4. Comeback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took so long to update but something call life was messing around.  
> Thanks for the comments and for reading this.

\---

 

Bucky can still feel the heat of the explosion below, the noise of the rotors soaring the quinjet up while the engine was closing the cargo gate door. He feels the hard metal floor quivering below and the rage on Steve’s voice while questioning him.

“Who the hell are you?”

That was the last question he would have expected from him, “W---What?”

Bucky looks confused back at him but Steve doesn’t seem to loosen his grip, pushing even harder. Instinctively he raises his lower body and back flips to set himself free, spinning to get up, but Steve is faster and grabs him again, this time slamming him against the wall, causing the whole plane to alarmingly shake.

“TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!” barks Steve this time, holding him close while Bucky grabs his wrists, trying to get rid of him without hurting him in the process.

“BARNES!” growls he back in response, feeling his head light for the whole fight and the final slam received against the metallic surface behind him.

He looks back at Steve, staring into his eyes darkened with anger, with a rage he thinks he’d never seen in them before.

He’d changed as much as himself and he knows that will hurt once he get the time to mourn for everything that was lost through the years they miss apart; but now he has to deal with what he have in front of him first.

“WHO’S CONTROLLING YOU NOW?” asks Steve this time, not letting go and keeping the same violence in his voice.

“Nobod…” he tries to say but is cut off before he can finish, being slammed once more against the metallic wall, banging his head again before Steve continues asking.

“WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.!!” he cries out, trying to make some sense, to get him to make some sense too.

But Steve’s not buying anything of what he says.

“LIES!!” he blames him before he forces another slam against the wall, “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s down!”

“No! It’s not!” he tries to say just to watch Steve’s anger arise again.

For his own luck, is Trip’s voice through the speakers what saves him.

“ _Guys! Please! Could you two behave!!_ “ they hear at his concerned but calm voice, calling them out of that absurd display of power, “ _We’re in a plane and your super soldier fight will bring us all down!_ ”

It’s true and Bucky knows he has to be the reasonable one there, just as he always had been between them two.

“Listen to me, please”, says he, letting go Steve’s wrists and raising his hands up in surrender, “It’s me… It’s Bucky…”

The anger seems to abandon Steve’s eyes to leave place for confusion, taking a few more seconds before releasing him and stepping back from him, “B-Bucky…?”

Bucky doesn’t move, not to get closer, not even dropping his hands, just staring back at him and his apparent state of shock. Instead he thinks it’s better if he starts to explain the easiest part of it all.

“Not all of S.H.I.E.L.D. ‘s down” starts he, slowly and measuring every word, “They’re rebuilding it.”

He stops there, waiting for any reaction but getting nothing but the same confused look on Steve’s face, so he continues.

“They recruited me,” says he, looking down at his own right sleeve, where the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem was embroidered over his shoulder “About a month ago, to help them bring down what’s left of HYDRA…”

“So it was you,” says Steve, speaking finally though he still doesn’t seem to be out from his shock yet, “All those destroyed bases…”

“Yes, some of them” answers Bucky, adding immediately the truth, “Most of them, actually…” because the only ones that were blown out were the ones he was designated to.

Steve takes a little movement closer as he says “I’ve been following them, trying to find you…”

Bucky tries to take a step back but is still against the wall and there’s no scape, “I know…”

“I’ve been looking for you all this time!” Steve continues and takes another movement for him.

“I know, Steve, I’m sorry,” says Bucky trying still to keep calm but feeling trapped.

“Why? Why wouldn’t you let me…”

“Because I couldn’t face you after everything I did!” confess he staring back, cornered and sharing the same confusion he sees on Steve’s eyes for a second, then the shame and his own regrets, reminding himself why he didn’t wanted this to happen, why he was still running away from him, “I’m sorry, I know you were after me, but I had to fix some things first,” says he hoping he could understand, but he’s not sure he’s even making any sense right now, “I had to…”

Then everything happens too quickly to realise what was going on until it was already done.

Steve breaks the distance between them and holds him tight in a hug, burring his face on his right shoulder. Bucky can feel him tremble and is not sure if it’s Steve or himself doing that; he can smell the scent of sweat and also that familiar smell of him, taking him back so many lives ago he feels disoriented for a moment, forgetting where he is or what’s going on right now, because all that matters is that he’s back where he belongs.

He smells like home and he’s not sure if the soft whimper he hears comes from him or from Steve either.

Slowly he moves his own hands to hold him too, petting his absurdly strong muscles of his back and stroking gently his sunshine hair, breathing deeply and ending with a little sob he chokes back immediately.

“Oh god… You’re alive” he hears Steve say, pulling a bit back to look at him, letting go from the hug to hold his face in his hands and stare at him like he’s seeing the dawn after a long night full of nightmares, glancing a wet smile, “You’re alive…”

Bucky puts his hands over Steve’s, though a bit self-conscious about his cyber limb, smiling back a little, still scared of what’s happening, still taking back everything he’s feeling and holding inside every emotion because he’s not sure about anything right now, just what’s obvious. “We both are alive, you stupid punk.”

Steve grins with his words, staring deeply into his eyes, wondering.

“You… You remember?”

It’s a difficult question and Bucky’s not sure he has an answer yet to that. He can remember most of everything, but there are still a lot more he can’t. And then there’re also a few other things he’s not sure he’s ready to admit he remembers too well for his own damnation.

“Not everything” says he finally, keeping his sight on Steve’s face, wandering from his eyes to his lips and then back, “There’re blank spots I can’t recall “continues he after a second, “But I know who I was before… And I know you…”

Does he?

He looks deeply into Steve’s eyes but he’s not sure he recognizes him anymore.

There’s something he can’t remember, sorrow and pain he’d never seen before, some kind of old look like he would have lived through the decades instead of just remain frozen through them. And even though the rage is gone, he can still feel it underneath the tears clouding his vision.

So he decides to just stick to the one thing he’s certainly sure.

“You’re my friend.”

For now that seems to be enough.

The smile grows in Steve’s lips as he holds him again tight, this time with less desperation and more recognition, like it wouldn’t have been decades apart but just a few days maybe.

And again Bucky feels he’s back home.

“C’mon, man up”, says Bucky trying to break the solemnity of the moment before it starts to get painful, “Stop crying like a baby…”

Steve laughs and pulls back, cleaning his eyes quickly with the back of his bloody hand, “I’m not crying, jerk, you are!”

“Sure punk, whatever makes you happy,” says he in the most natural way he’d speak since he can remember in the past seventy years. Just then he seems to acknowledge the blood on Steve’s cheek, product of a deep cut near his temple, “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine”, says he back, cleaning the wound with his fingers though flinching a little.

“The hell you are”, says Bucky rolling his eyes, taking Steve by his shoulder and pushing him to walk closer to the cabin, “Trip! Where’s the medical?”

“ _Are you two done fighting?_ ” asks he from the other side of the divider, the one Bucky slides to show the controls and the agent piloting the quinjet there.

“I hope so,” says Bucky, turning to Steve and stepping aside to let him see inside, “This is Agent Antoine Triplett, big badass son of a bitch…”

“Just call me Trip.”

“… Also Gabe Jones’ grandchild” adds Bucky as his favourite piece of information, watching Steve raises his brows and opening his mouth in awe, just as he expected.

“It’s an honour to meet you, Captain”, says Trip turning to shake Steve’s hand, still managing to soak every new word they’re giving to him.

“Honour is mine”, says Steve back, “Your grandfather was a great man…”

“Thank you, sir. Agent Barnes’ been telling me about his time with the Howling Commandos…”

Trip couldn’t finish before Steve’s glaring at Bucky next to him “You didn’t…”

“He deserves to know!” Bucky defends himself, though the scowl in Steve’s eyes was enough to make him change the subject, “The medical, where’s it?”

“Here, behind the seats, third cabinet” answers Trip chocking back the laugh before he turns his sight back to the sky in front of them, “I’ll call the headquarter in the meantime.”

Bucky nods in agreement before he turns to take the kit from the mentioned cabinet, pointing Steve to one of the seats and taking the one next to him.

“I really don’t need that,” says he watching Bucky take a gauze pad and some antiseptic to clean his wound.

“Shut up, Rogers, and don’t bring that super soldier shit one me”, says he before he takes his face by the chin and forces him to look to the side to let him work fast on that ugly cut that was already mending itself, “I know now how that really works so leave the BS for anyone else.”

Steve stays still through the few seconds that it lasts, both enjoying in silence that familiar scene they both lived so many times before and now there was again, though different and just like a shadow of what it really used to be, like playing the role to make sure everything was ok between them, because there was something they both shared and keep them grounded back then. Maybe it was a good place to start this time again.

“What were you doing there anyway?” asks Bucky with his eyes so fixed in Steve’s wound he doesn’t think it’s strange that he’s speaking to him in the same way he used to do back in Brooklyn, after having found him beaten on a back alley.

“Following your lead, of course”, says Steve frowning a bit.

Bucky smiles before he mutters “Stupid reckless jerk.”

Steve just glances a little smirk and adds nothing else, keeping the silence for a moment longer while Bucky seals his wound.

“Where are we heading?” asks Steve once they’re finish.

“The _Playground_ ”, answers Bucky while closing the kit and leaving it down, “That’s S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new headquarters near Portland.”

“Playground? What kind of name is that?”

“Well, not that _Triskellion_ was that swell…” says Bucky in a protective way he’s not sure why is using, except for the fact somehow they’re talking about his own place.

Steve looks back at him with the smile steady on his lips all the time.

“And who’s in charge now?” asks he then, making Bucky gasp before he can answer.

“I… can’t tell you.”

It was definitely not what Steve expected from him, “What? Why?”

And probably his reasons wouldn’t satisfy him either.

“Because…” he starts self-consciously, “You don’t have the clearance for that.”

He sees Steve open his eyes bigger and his jaw dropping after he says that, “You can’t be serious…”

But he is and the little shrug on his shoulders with his soft apologetic smile seems to show him so. He knows Steve’s not aware that Director Coulson’s alive and he plans on keep that secret just as this new S.H.I.E.L.D. seem to keep his own secrets safe.

“I can only assure you is a good man,” says he finally, not wanting to add anything else on that subject, instead changing it to something he knows would catch his attention better, “And the team that’s working with me, they’re great people too, for start there’s Trip who’s been my wingman all this time and really is like working with a better version of Gabe, mind the recklessness though; then there are the kids, well, they’re not really kids but I can’t think of them being older than thirteen, and also there’s agent May, you’d probably hear about her from… What?” asks Bucky, stopping his rambling and looking back at Steve, who is gazing at him with an overwhelmed look on his face.

“It’s just that” Steve starts, sliding through every word slowly as he speaks, staring at him deeply like he’s confessing something important but painful, “All this time looking for you I was so afraid of how I would find you… After what happened at the helicarrier... “ Steve stops and looks down, rubbing his hands together like he always did when there was something bothering his mind and he couldn’t get rid of the thoughts. Bucky thinks he still can read this kind of signs too well, “I was so scared but you’re… You seem to be… Doing fine…”

Bucky takes his hands between his, forcing a smile with his lips tightened, “Not really… But I’m trying.”

 

 

 

It’s past midday when they finally land in the Playground and Bucky feels his heart in his throat when the quinjet gate opens to show in front of them the welcome committee: Just Director Coulson standing in his black suit, hands in his pockets and the usual gentle smile on his lips.

He doesn’t need to look at Steve to know he’s in shock again.

“… Phil?”

He starts to walk towards him and Bucky follows immediately, reaching to take him by the arm to stop him before he rushes too quickly.

“Steve…”

“I guess an explanation is needed here, Captain Rogers”, says Coulson keeping his position even when Steve gets too closer.

“They told us… You…”

“Died, yes, I did indeed,” says the director with the same excitement he would have had giving the weather, “But they brought me back.”

“What? But how’s that…” starts to ask Steve visibly confused, with Bucky still holding him and keeping his sight on every detail, just in case he had to intervene, because he knows how the _big guy_ can react when he finds out someone had lied to him. He remembers and, for a moment, that little detail warms his heart, “Why didn’t you tell us you’re alive?”

“Director Fury’s orders at the beginning”, answers Coulson, keeping the same tone and smile while explaining, “And after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D…. Well, things had not been easy and this wasn’t a priority.”

Bucky can still feel the volatile mood on Steve, but he’s almost sure he won’t do anything stupid, that’s the only reason he leaves when Coulson asks him to, going back to the quinjet to help Trip to unload their equipment and let them speak in private.

“Everything ok there?” asks the other agent when Bucky starts to check the unused weapons before putting them back in each of their cases.

“Hope so…” says he looking over his shoulder at the two men talking apparently in calm, though he’s sure that stiffness in Steve’s shoulders and back means he’s restraining himself from explode, “If he’s not punching Coulson, then I’d say things are going peachy…”

Both keep their attention back to the director’s reactions, just in case they need to rush to save him from some sort of super soldier burst of rage. Nothing happens and when they’re ready both walk towards the other two, still standing in the garage entrance, staring into each other and falling silent when they hear Bucky and Trip coming.

Bucky stands on Steve’s right, holding a pair of sacks with weaponry over his shoulder and looking back at him closely.

“Agent Barnes, Why don’t you take Captain Rogers to the facilities?” orders the director while taking the bags he’s carrying “Me and Agent Triplett can take care of this.”

Bucky feels his own breathing on the edge, completely sure he could jump in any second if they keep the tension between them like that, but forces himself to respond accordingly.

“Yes sir” says he giving in and taking Steve’s arm loosely to point him the path just to be pushed away, having to follow his pace until he catches him two steps after, guiding the captain to the elevator in silence, the same that remains during their ride to the sixth floor, staring at him while Steve looks away, rage installed on his face in a way that doesn’t suit him.

Once on their floor Bucky leads the way to his own dorm, where his collection of weapons is still organized over one of the beds, closing the door behind him and watching Steve’s back while he puts his hands on his waist, accenting his super soldier figure.

“Do you trust this people?” asks he without looking at him, staring at the huge window in front backlighting his silhouette.

Does he?

For a moment Bucky’s eyes wanders through his own thoughts before he answers.

“Yes.”

Steve turns to him, taking back the two steps keeping the distance between them, “Why? How can you trust them?” asks he in a low growl, “S.H.I.E.L.D. is full of liars…”

“I know”, says Bucky before he can continue.

“Then how can you be so naïve?”

“Because I chose to believe in this!” burst he strongly, not as much with his voice but with the fierce look in his blue eyes, “You think I don’t know where I am? S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA were the same from the beginning; the things the SSR told us during war were the same things Pierce and Zola and every other used to say to me before my missions…”

He can see the way Steve’s face turn from anger to pain when he mentions his own past as the Winter Soldier, something he knows they’ll have to discuss at some point, but it’s still not the right time, so he just keeps talking.

“… But right now I rather be here with this people, because I can tell they are different.”

“Can you really?” asks Steve doubting him.

“Yes”, says he sure of himself, something he can finally be after so many weeks trying to fix his own mind around what he was going through, “Because this team is not after power or world’s new order like the others are, they’re after the truth. They just want to make things better from scratch, they’d suffer but they just keep going because it’s the right thing to do and are ready to tear everything down to get it done,“ says Bucky taking a step closer to Steve, “And I’m willing to help them, because it’s the least I can do to redeem myself for everything I did before… Why are you looking at me like this?” asks he finally, noticing the softness that now floods Steve’s eyes and the little smile that shows shyly on his reddish lips.

“It’s nothing…” says Steve staring back at him with a kind of sadness in his eyes, leaving those words linger in the air until the silence gets too obvious between them and it’s agonizing.

“You’re still a terrible liar”, says Bucky finally, looking away and pointing to the door of the bath, “You better clean yourself up before I show you around. There’re fresh clothes you can take from the drawers. I’ll come for you in a few minutes.”

Then he turns to leave, holding the doorknob a brief moment longer just in case Steve tries to stop him, but he doesn’t.

Once outside he leans against the opposite wall, looking at the closed door in front of him, wondering what the hell is he doing.

“Are you ok?” asks Trip a few steps from him, looking worried for what he assumes is his own distressed look.

Bucky forces a smile, just like he’s so used to do, though his eyes doesn’t seem to match and the result is a lame attempt to cover up his own thoughts eating his mind.

“Can I use your bathroom?” asks he to change the subject, receiving a simple nod for answer before he gets inside the other agent’s room, less illuminated than his own as the sun was now on the other side of the building.

He just takes off the upper part of his uniform, washing his flesh arm, face and torso, ignoring the bruising and mending a few little wounds before he tides up his hair in his now usual bun and gets out.

“Need a shirt?” asks Trip tossing him a black long sleeved one.

“Got a hoodie?” asks Bucky while putting it on.

“Want a matching purse too, princess?”

“Shut up”, says Bucky back with a little smile while watching Trip get him a grey S.H.I.E.L.D. hoodie anyway.

“How’s the Captain?” asks Trip while sitting on one of the beds, looking at Bucky leaning against the drawer, similar from the one he has on his own room but this one’s surface is crowded with family and friends pictures, some of them are decoloured ones from Gabe and his toddler grandson, just a reminder that he’s a man out of time too.

“I don’t know,” says Bucky, crossing his arms over his chest.

“And how are you?”

Bucky looks back at him and just shrugs, not having a real answer for that.

“You know you have to figure it out soon, right?”

This time Bucky looks away, taking a deep breathe before he leaves the room, crossing the hallway to enter back to his own dorm, just to find Agent Koenig handling Steve a S.H.I.E.L.D. id.

“Sergeant Barnes” says the man when he sees him coming in, making Steve turn to look at him with a strange air on his face, with his short hair still soaking wet and white and grey S.H.I.E.L.D. sportswear on, though what on him looks just about the right size on Steve seems to be stretched to its maximum. “Good you’re here to show Captain Rogers around.”

Bucky looks at them with a blank expression, nodding lightly, “Sure.”

“I just gave him his own identification for Level 8, so you shouldn’t have any problem moving around…”

“Level 8?” asks Bucky, staring at Steve doubtful, “I thought you’re a 6.”

Both look back at him with a similar kind of question on their faces, “How do you know that?” asks Steve before he gets closer, his hands on the pockets of the sweat pants where he puts in the card.

Bucky shrugs and turns to lead the way to the elevator, allowing himself to think about that last question for too long and far deeper than he should.

_Two targets, level six. They already cost me Zola._

He stands against the mirrored wall of the lift while his sight starts to wander through his own memories, looking for that voice he recognizes too well.

_I want confirmed death in ten hours._

“… Buck?”

Bucky lifts his eyes from his own feet to look back at Steve, connecting finally that piece of memory with him.

“I shot you.”

The doors of the elevator opens and Koenig gets out of it, waiting for them at the hallway, but neither of them move.

“What?”

“At the helicarrier… I-I shot you”, repeats he with a stutter.

Steve’s look remains the same front of patient neutrality while he listens to him, “Yes, you did…”

“I… Had to stop you…” starts to say him, not sure if he’s explaining that part to Steve or to himself, “That was my mission… You were my mission… I had to…”

“I know, Buck”, says Steve, softening his eyes while he speaks, “It wasn’t your fault…”

Bucky looks straight back at him after that. It’s not the first time he hears someone saying that it wasn’t his fault, that he was being controlled against his will, that he didn’t have a choice. But hear Steve say it hurts him more than any other before.

Bucky tightens his lips and looks down again, forcing himself to keep breathing, to let it go, to stay calm even when he wants to scream, to punch the walls and tear everything apart until there’s nothing left, just to see if it can ease some of the agony inside.

“Bucky?”

“I’m fine. Let’s go”, says he immediately, not raising his eyes from the floor while he walks finally outside the elevator, moving fast through the fourth floor, waiting for Steve to catch up just after he’s sure he’s breathing normally again.

It’s a good thing Koenig goes with them through the tour, because Bucky’s mind was rolling over and over around his own memories, looking more like a ghost than he’d been lately. He couldn’t laugh at the awkward moments that happened when the kids of the team met Captain America; the way Fitz stares at Steve in total awe and couldn’t come up with a single word to say to him until he burst something to stop Simmons shameful babbling about his super soldier serum and how perfect work it did with him, detailing every measure she seems to have memorized about his body, or later how Skye starts to ask him about everything that comes into her mind, without any context or linearity, making a mess of herself like she always do when she’s nervous, fidgeting with her gadgets and phone to apparently calm herself down.

The only moment Bucky seems to react is when Trip appears next to him, back in a more casual wear.

“I’m sorry but we should make our report”, says the agent, taking him back to the elevators and up to the dorms.

“I thought we were doing the report,” says Bucky looking confused.

“Already did it” answers Trip with a smile, “I was just taking you out from the fire line.”

Bucky stops his tracks to look at him, “What?”

“Skye send me a message to get you out of there”, says Trip showing him his phone, making him connect Skye’s apparent clumsiness with actual quality spy work, “Says you might need some time to assimilate what’s going on.”

Takes him a moment to understand completely until he finally glances a little smile, looking down at his own feet.

“Thanks”, says finally, turning to enter his dorm, sitting on his bed and taking one of his guns, starting to dismantle his favourite rifle and cleaning carefully each part after, leaving his head completely blank for a while until the voice of Alexander Pierce wasn’t there anymore and the memories faded away.

He lost count of the time he spent alone in his own room, realizing it had been a long while since the sunlight was almost gone and he was rearranging his personal arsenal over the drawer, listening outside to the loud laugh of Trip and the kids from the lounge area from that floor, just past the next dorm.

He thought that was his queue to go back and face reality again.

“ … And here comes the sidekick”, says Skye raising her beer bottle as she watches Bucky getting closer to gathered group.

They’re all sitting on the comfy sofas around a centre table with sandwiches, snacks and bottles of beer and soda, not just the kids but also Agent Koenig, Director Coulson and even Agent Morales, a girl who’d been recently added to follow every order Koenig could imagine to give, everyone looking relaxed and happy, except for Steve who was still wearing the same neutral stiff expression.

“For the last time, Skye, I wasn’t his sidekick,” says Bucky walking towards them and perching on the couch between Trip and Steve, receiving a beer from the agent immediately, “Those fucking comics lied about me.”

They start to laugh but everyone went silent when Captain America raises his head to say, “Not everything was a lie.”

Everyone look to each other in expectation, probably being that the first thing he’d say, while Steve and Bucky share a significant stare for a moment.

“You mean like…” starts Bucky serious before he burst into a loud laugh “ _The Nazi Alien Dinosaurs_!”

“Or Hitler’s Vampires Unit!” adds Steve laughing too for the admiration of everyone else who were probably expecting some sort of formal speech and not the reaction of two boys recalling stupid stories, “Or those Ninjas in Switzerland.”

“Hey! That was true!” protests Bucky still laughing.

“Of course not! You were all just still drunk after the Oktoberfest in Liechtenstein!”

“I wasn’t!” objects Bucky, turning to Steve with a clear insulted look on his face then back to the rest of the team, still staring at them without knowing how to react to what they’re seeing, obviously shocked with that unexpected side of the always correct Captain America they all had always thought of him, “Ok guys, let me tell you how it really was…”

That’s how they spend the rest of the evening listening to Bucky and Steve telling their version of the stories, far more entertaining than the bleached ones the USO sold to the children and the masses back in the days.

Bucky could feel the warm of the happy memories melting some of the ice inside of him and it was good, even when he knew what he would find there after the laughs were off, but right now he wouldn’t care. With Steve beside him, some food on the table and a beer on his hand, everything feels so familiar he thinks he can heal better just keeping that voice near, just hearing that stupid laugh everyday, just like the old days, before the war and before too many words turn his own world into a mess.

Bucky chokes back those thoughts too, taking his eyes away from Steve’s lips as he speaks and looking back at the kids enjoying the stories directly from their own hero, taking a sip from his fourth beer when he sees Director Coulson and Agent Koenig in front of him getting up quickly, looking at someone standing obviously behind him, so he turns and watches Melinda and Shaw on each side of a smiling Nick Fury he didn’t hear coming.

How could they sneak on him like that? Was he loosing his skills?

“Sir!” salutes Phil immediately, “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Wouldn’t be my style to announce myself before I show up, Phil” says the man standing there as now is Steve who’s getting up and turning to face him, “I came as fast as I could when I was informed Captain Rogers was here.”

“Of course you did…” mutters Steve and something in his voice alerts Bucky that this is not good, “You said you didn’t knew.”

“It’s a bit more difficult to explain than that, Rogers”, says Fury trying to keep calm, something he knows how hard could be while having Steve’s enraged eyes staring.

“… Steve” calls Bucky but he’s not heard.

Then everything happens too fast.

Before anyone else can see it coming or even react, Steve’s slamming Nick Fury against the opposite wall and screaming for answers. Melinda and Shaw are the first to try to stop him, but it only takes a fraction of seconds and three movements for Steve to get rid of them and even knocks out Shaw.

“STEVE!” yells Bucky jumping over the sofa, not sure if he’s trying to call his attention to stop chocking Nick Fury or to watch out from the pistols Coulson, Koenig and Morales are taking out to point at him, “LET HIM GO!” orders he while taking Steve from his back and pulling him away from the other guy, but it’s not easy, worst when his attempt to control him gives Fury the chance to pull out one of his devices and try to electrocute Steve. He gets rid of Bucky to start punching this time the black face of the man, just a few times but that’s more than enough to make a huge damage.

“STOP IT!” yells Bucky again trying to make him, looking how Trip is now on his side trying to catch Steve’s fists first, but when he realises he can’t he tries to pull Fury away, same thing Melinda starts to help him to do once she’s back on her feet, with her nose bleeding profusely from the previous hit.

“TAKE HIM OUT!” orders Bucky while pulling Steve back, using his metal arm to choke him and force him to stop fighting, ending both on the floor where he lets him go, pinning over him immediately to keep him down.

“HE’S USING US, BUCK! HE’S BEEN USING US ALL THIS TIME!” screams Steve trying to free himself, but not attacking him, rolling and escaping from his grasp to go after Fury again, eluding a shot from Coulson’s tranquilizer while the shot coming from Koenig’s gun ends on Bucky’s metal shoulder as he catches Steve up again.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” screams Bucky, taking Steve from his back, holding tight his arms, “TAKE HIM OUT, NOW!” orders to Melinda and Trip, who were carrying a stunned Fury away from Captain America’s berserker stage, “Stop this, Steve!” says he now closer to his ear, looking beside how Skye was standing defensively in front of Simmons and Fitz while the other three were still pointing their _night-night_ guns to them, “C’mon, you stupid fucking punk! This is not a back alley, you reckless jerk...! C’mon!” says he annoyed and pulling him back, letting him go when Steve stops fighting to go after Nick and they’re safe inside the elevator and on their way down, raising his hand to the rest of the team to stay where they are as he pushes Steve back to the hallway and to the dorms.

“The hell was that?” asks Bucky once he’d locked up his bedroom door, staring at Steve breathing heavily trying to calm himself down, pacing from side to side.

“He lied to me!” snaps Steve back, “He said he knew nothing about you!”

Bucky stands straight in front of him, ready to take the shot if he had to, “You wasn’t supposed to know.”

“He knew I was desperate looking for you!” continues Steve, each word coming out from his mouth with too much rage to handle, “I asked him and he lied! He said he didn’t know where you were! He had no right to keep this from me!”

“It wasn’t Fury!” stops him Bucky, making Steve look confused back, “I didn’t wanted you to find me, they were all just keeping my secret.”

Steve stares at him in disbelief, betrayal clear showing on his face, “But why, Bucky?”

“Already told you why…”

“It wasn’t your fault!”

“STOP SAYING THAT!” blows out Bucky finally, regretting immediately his lack of control, breathing deeply before he adds, “Please… Just don’t say that.”

“But it’s true”, says Steve getting closer in slow movements until he can put his hands over Bucky’s shoulders, looking for his elusive sight, “You can’t blame yourself for that…”

“Shut up” asks he looking down, taking Steve’s hands to push them away from him but not doing it after all, just staying there biting his lip a moment.

“Buck…”

“You have no idea, Steve”, says he with his look still down, just like his voice, “It was me. I did all that. I remember every mission, every kill, every time I pulled the trigger”, he stops a moment to choke back the lump he felt in his throat, “I remember how it was. I remember how I felt…”

“Bucky, please…”

“And it was good!” says he finally, looking up at him with his eyes filled with the tears he can’t hold back anymore as he’s finally saying out loud the only truth he was still not ready to accept, “That’s the worst part, Steve… When I remember everything I did, the worst part is that I enjoyed it. I was so good at it, I did it so well, better than anyone else…”

Steve just stares back at him, his red lips getting paler with every word Bucky says.

“And I can’t change that. I’ve tried to make things right, I’m trying to… But no matter what I do now, I can’t change what I felt, I can’t change it because that’s what I am…”

“No, Bucky, that’s not what you are now.”

“How could you know?” asks Bucky before Steve pulls him and hugs him tight, holding his head with one hand and stroking his back with the other.

“I just know you, stupid jerk”, says Steve and let him cry in silence over his shoulder for a long while, just keeping him as close as he can, making him feel he’s safe enough to just let go what had been killing him inside for too long.

He lost the count of the minutes and the time they spend just standing there, in the middle of the room with no other sound than the sobs and then just the sighs they share.

When they finally part Bucky’s eyes look swollen and Steve’s shirt is stained with his tears.

“I know someone who could help you”, says he while Bucky’s cleaning his face with the sleeves of his hoodie, “I’ll call him tomorrow if you want to, but right now we should get some rest, it’s been a long day.”

“You staying here?” asks Bucky with his voice still raspy.

Steve looks around at the couple of beds and shrugs, “I had it worse but at least we don’t have to share the same old shrieking bed like we used to when we were kids.”

Bucky burst a chuckle before he nods.

After that everything went smoothly, from the quick shower he took to get rid of the day and then the way he pushed his bed until it was stuck next to the other, so when they both were laying there was no space between them and he could take his hand with his own flesh one.

“I missed you so much, Buck” says Steve once the lights were off, looking into the shadows of his eyes he could still see even in the darkness, “You have no idea how many times I wanted to…”

“Don’t do this now, Steve”, says Bucky stopping him, tightening his grip on his hand, “If you wanna talk, then why don’t you start by telling me what was all that New York battle shit you got yourself into, Captain Reckless Jerk” asks he ready to chase Steve’s sadness away as he always did, “I mean aliens? Really, Rogers? How the hell d’you end up always messing things up like that?”

It’s close to dawn when they finally fell asleep.

And Steve never let go Bucky’s hand through that night.

 

 

 


	5. Secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam brings a Spider with him to the Playground.   
> Everybody has some secrets and now it's the time to start unveiling them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Unintended racism.

\--- 

 

“You should shave”, says Bucky to Steve by the third day he’s been in the Playground, sitting on the floor of the gym and drinking some water to cool down after two hours of sparring.

“Yeah? Well you should cut your hair then”, says Steve in return, taking off the banding from his hands.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “Not everything’s a competition!” argues he trying to be patient with him, “And I already told you I like it this way.”

“Then I like my stubble and it’s not going off yet”, says he stubbornly.

“Are you sure there isn’t a code of dressing being Captain America?” asks Bucky trying from another front, though he knows it’s a lost cause; once Steve’s mind is set on something, there’s no mortal or divine power able to make him change it.

“Guess just the star spangled outfit and the shield.”

Past days have been like that: Casual conversation in a familiar way he feels normal, even though he knows it’s not, but it’s better to pretend everything’s fine than start talking too much.

Talk too much with Steve was never a good thing and Bucky can still regret the last time he did so. He tells himself it’s better this way and he keeps acting like they’re just the same old friends they always were, that things between them got messed up but they’re working on make it ok.

The first morning at the Playground was about get things right between Captain America and the rest of the team, starting with Nick Fury, who’s face was swollen and bruised from the last night, but his look had the same nerve and the smile he had on his lips was still pretty sass.

“Hope you come here just to talk, Rogers”, said he when Bucky brought Steve to speak to him, standing between them two in case his intervention was necessary, “I wouldn’t want to loose another tooth, specially now that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dental plan is not active anymore.”

“You told me once to not trust anyone”, said Steve standing with his hands grasping his belt in his usual rest stance, “Guess that included you too.”

“Of course it included me, When I say _Everyone_ it means even yourself, Rogers”, said Fury calmly, “Just like your friend, even knowing he’s safe here, he keeps both eyes open; We’ve learnt that HYDRA could be anywhere and we should keep observant, to protect the ones we love or to put them down if they betray us…”

Bucky looked back at Steve, thinking about himself and what he’d told him the past night, and if it ever comes to put him down, if Steve would have the nerve to do it.

Because, things being otherwise, he was damn sure he wouldn’t.

Nick Fury left that same morning, not taking anyone with him this time, and for all he got to know, his mission was not related to them or S.H.I.E.L.D. anymore.

Seemed the former director had some new and more important issues to fix somewhere else.

After that the rest of the team took for granted he and Steve would start to work together, even he had that thought for a moment, but turned out his failed attack and the lack of intel May and Shaw managed to get from their own assault, put them back into square one, where everything depended on what they could get from other sources. And that meant stay grounded on the Playground for a few days.

Mind the irony.

 

 

First day was tough.

After Fury left and both super soldiers were left alone by the rest of the team, like they would have secretly arranged that, the inevitable conversation came across.

“We should talk”, said Steve sitting in front of him at the sixth floor lounge, taking a serious tone in his voice that Bucky didn’t like at all.

“About what?”

And then, that answer was worst.

“About us.”

Bucky looked away, his sight ending at the bar across the room, thinking he didn’t wanted to face that kind of subject sober.

“I need to know if you remember... “ started Steve slowly, like he was choosing carefully every word he was saying, “Before the train…”

“I do”, said Bucky to stop his rambling, still not looking back at him.

There was a silence that lasted a few more seconds between them before Steve spoke again, “Since I woke up a couple of years ago, I’ve been thinking…”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“I said _Don’t_ ”, repeated Bucky this time forcing himself to look back at him, “It’s pointless.”

If that broke something in Steve the way it did for Bucky, it never showed.

Both kept in silence a few more seconds before Buck had the strength and the clarity to keep talking.

“Things were different back then and we are different now…” said he avoiding again his eyes to stare down, because he knew that look at him while saying all that would hurt too much, “We never came back from war, Steve.”

There was silence again, but this time Bucky could feel the pain he’d caused with his words.

“It’s better this way, pal”, said Bucky trying to convince himself too about that, “We know how being friends and brothers work, we did it well for a long time and it kept us both alive.”

Steve finally could catch his sight again, facing his steel blue eyes trying to glance a reaffirming smile.

“We both have changed too much”, said Bucky finally.

Steve kept staring at him, his transparent look showing some sort of sadness and the same anger that never seem to leave his eyes anymore. “You’re right. We both have changed”, said he finally, “I’m not sure I know who you are anymore and you can be damn sure I’m not who I used to be.”

Bucky thought he should never have that kind of conversation again without a bottle or two of whisky already on his body.

 

 

Until that third day and after that attempt of conversation, everything between them was about pretending they were still just two kids from Brooklyn, trapped in this weird future that was everything they imagined it would be: the robots, the flying cars and, of course, the baseball disappointment both agreed to never speak about.

Bucky was still trying to think of a good way to get Steve to shave that uneven stubble when the voice of Agent May echoes in the gym through the speakers.

_“Captain Rogers, your presence is required at the helipad.”_

Bucky looks at him waiting for an explanation, but he just get a smile in response and a subtle sign to follow him.

“Are you leaving?” is the first thought that crosses Bucky’s mind, but he’s sure Steve would have tell him if that was his plan.

“Of course not” says he while heading to the stairs to go down a floor to the garage entrance, “I told you I invited some friends…”

Bucky follow closely, jumping three steps at the time, just like him, to catch up at the exact same moment a quinjet maneuvers outside to land, with Agent May waiting near the platform, on her black catsuit and all her hair in a ponytail, looking like she’s about to go into a mission instead of receiving some guests.

“Your _negro_ boyfriend?” asks Bucky once beside Steve.

“Don’t ever use that word again”, says Steve in an angry tone that sounds more like a command than a friendly request, “In this time is offensive and racist”, a thing Bucky would never want to be, though back at his days it was the most accepted term.

Still, he doesn’t let it end there.

“Nothing to say against calling him your _boyfriend_ , then?” asks he trying to make a simple joke, but instead of that he got Steve turning to him and glaring back in a quiet anger.

“You wanna do this now?” asks Steve and Bucky is left speechless, glancing away and to the black haired woman descending from the quinjet, followed closely by a smiling african american that he knew immediately who he was.

The woman glimpses a smile to Steve before she went directly to Melinda, walking with her inside the main building without a single look to him or anyone else.

On the other side Sam drops two big bags before he hugs Steve tightly and he does it back, making Bucky stand back feeling weird in a very awkward situation.

They took a moment before finally they part, Steve still holding Sam closely by his waist while turning to Bucky.

“So… You’re _him_ ”, says Sam with a smile, letting go of Steve to get closer, offering his hand to shake, “Man, you’re tough to find.”

Bucky takes his hand though just for a brief second, giving a good look at his bright brown eyes and the perfect white of his wide genuine smile, looking quickly for something to say before it was too obvious he was simply staring.

“I’m sorry about your wings”, says he finally, wanting to make sure with that line that he knows who he is, that he remembers what happened between them and, of course, that he is truly sorry about what he did, even though it was a master movement and he was still very proud of his own performance that day at DC, something he wouldn’t admit unless he wanted another painful chat with Steve.

“Don’t worry about that, man”, says Sam with a cheerful smirk in his mouth while taking one of the bags from the floor, “Turned out Stark took it as a personal challenge to make me a new improved ones”, explains he while patting some metallic thing inside the black package he’s holding.

“That’s Howard’s boy”, says Steve to Bucky, as if he wouldn’t know whom the famous _playboy, millionaire, philanthropist and not a hero_ was.

“I know.”

Steve looks back at Sam, like he was expecting something from him, the same look that Sam gives back to him, and so both remain in silence for a few more seconds until finally Steve speaks again.

“I thought you said you’d bring Natasha too.”

“He did.”

The answer came from a petite beautiful woman, with deep green eyes and short waved hair in astonishing red, leaving Bucky wondering two important things, first was how could she sneak so amazingly good that he didn’t notice her until she spoke, and second…

“I know you…”

She smiles and cocks her head, “Do you, Agent Barnes?”

Her voice sounds familiar to him, but there’s something wrong he can’t define, like in the way her lips are moving or the lack of any distinguish accent.

“She was at DC too”, says Steve trying to help him remember, obviously thinking that’s the memory he’s referring to.

And she follows the lead.

“You shot me then”, says she pointing at her left shoulder, “And before that too, in Odessa…”

_Odessa_. There was a mission in Odessa, a nuclear scientist; a single round through someone was enough to kill him. _Someone_.

Why couldn’t he remember her?

“Agent Romanoff”, says he finally, just putting together everything that he’d been hearing about this top class agent that everyone seems to admire too much, “I guess it’s just that I’ve heard so much about you here.”

Her smiles keeps perfectly mysterious as he says that but he knows she’s hiding so much inside of her it’s probably dangerous to look too closely into.

“Did you know S.H.I.E.L.D. has Bucky’s files?” asks Steve then, not wasting more time with what seems to be important to him, as always.

“Of course I know”, says she looking innocently, “I gave them to Director Coulson.”

“So you knew that Coulson was alive too?” asks he while crossing his arms and glaring down at her, making him and Sam not only uncomfortable but also alert of what could come from that glare, “What else did you knew that you didn’t tell me, Natasha?”

“I couldn’t tell you about Coulson so I couldn’t tell you about this either”, says she keeping the same naïve look on her face and her lips moving hypnotically with every word.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. was down.”

“Not to me”, says she with some sort of pain that melted his heart and Bucky can’t understand how is Steve keeping the same anger, “Since Fury was alive I knew it was a matter of time before someone would start rebuilding it, and when I found out it was Coulson, then everything started to make sense…”

“What makes sense?”

The three men now were staring at her waiting for what she would say, caught like kittens with a red light on the wall.

“They brought him back to life for a reason”, starts she slowly and in a low secretive voice, “Fury said Coulson was the heart of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that everything that was needed to rebuild it was inside of him.”

“Sounds like one of his lame poetry”, says Steve trying to keep suspicious, but failing.

“I thought so too, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Then what does that mean?” asks finally Bucky, getting anxious with all the mystery.

She looks back at him and her smile was definitely something he’d seen before.

“That’s exactly why I’m here for”, says she sheepishly this time, “Though I had to convince Maria it was just to check on you both. She was suspicious but allowed me into her ride here.”

This time is Sam who steps into the conversation “What’s that? It was me who invited you in.”

She smiles back at him “You still don’t know how your new girlfriend works, Sam.”

He looks confused but it doesn’t last for too long.

“So, guys, which one of you will show us around?” asks she taking Sam’s arm while looking back at Steve and Bucky.

And he smiles back at her.

She’s good. Maybe as good as everyone said she would be.

 

 

Even with Sam and Maria as the main guests, the couple of super soldiers and the super spy gathered in the same building, what gets everyone’s attention that afternoon comes after Skye and Simmons calls everyone to the lab to watch a wonder.

After weeks working on his own secret project, the large group of weirdoes crowds around Fitz, who’s sitting on his wheelchair wearing a tight bodysuit in blue and silver that covers all his body, including gloves with a delicate mesh on the fingertips.

“Are you ready?” asks he before he puts on a circlet over his forehead and every silvery line gets illuminated, making an electric buzz that gives Bucky shivers.

The next thing they see is Fitz standing on his feet, even moving his toes separately before he walks a few steps, then spins to his right, next to his left, bend his knees and finally jumps a few times.

“… Holy cow” mutters Bucky, watching him perform this miracle, “How did you…?”

“It’s a _highly advanced bio electrical impulse conducer and controller”_ , explains Jemma by Fitz side, amazed with him but also showing still some apprehension as her hands are hovering around him in case he falls.

“Still working on a cooler name”, adds Leo with a smile, looking at his audience and waiting for some reaction beside Bucky’s.

It’s Director Coulson who steps in front and hugs Fitz carefully before anyone else, “I knew you could make it”, says he patting a bit his back while Leo hugs him too with a proud smile on his young lips.

Then is Skye who joins that hug, holding them both with teary eyes; next is Jemma from behind Fitz and finally Melinda gets closer too with a gentle touch on Coulson and Fitz shoulders.

“Way better than his first option”, says Trip to Bucky, staring at the beautiful moment from the distance while Agent Koenig and Morales start clapping a few steps from them too.

“What was it?” asks Bucky, double thinking if it is a good idea to start clapping too or not.

“Jemma told me he found him trying to use that centipede program on himself first”, says he, “She stopped him from take the shot a night before I came back. I told her we should alert Coulson or May about it, but she made me promise to not say anything to anyone. And after that we broke up.”

That last part gets Bucky off guard, “You mean, you two were…?”

“Kind of, yes” says Trip shrugging a bit his shoulders, his eyes fixed on Jemma’s smiling face like he’s seeing a work of art, “I guess it was the best call after all. Some guys do stupid things for love, but some other perform miracles like this.”

Bucky finds himself tasting that line like it would mean something else for him until he realizes he’s almost alone in the back as everyone else, even Sam, Maria and Steve, are now gathered around Fitz watching him show off his bodysuit and how it works.

Everyone except for a red haired woman who looks at him and glances a little smile before she disappears through the door. Bucky looks back at the rest before he slides out of sight and follows her through the hallway, stopping her by holding her arm carefully with his right hand.

“What are you doing?” asks he the moment she looks back at him with his beautiful green eyes and the same one-sided smile on her lips.

“Using this window”, says she sliding away from his grasp and moving quickly to the stairs, “Are you not curious too, James?”

Nobody calls him James and still the way she does it feels so familiar he follows her immediately, because he was curious, though not about what Coulson could be hiding.

 “Where are we going?”, asks Bucky once he notices they’re not heading up to the director’s office, what he would have expected to be the obvious place to start digging, but down to the underground floors.

“I heard Maria speaking with Koenig about _scratches in the wall_ and he looked down and said _later_ ”, explains she while jumping the steps down gracefully, “That means it’s not at Coulson’s office and, since this whole place is basically concrete and glass, it’s hard it would be at any surface floor, so my bet is somewhere under, probably the warehouse.”

Sounds logic and Bucky follows to the second basement, where the lighting is dim and the hallways are narrow. He can see in front of him the signal of what’s on that floor, to his left is the stockroom and to the right what looks like a cage.

“I’ll cover your six”, says he staying behind her watching her back while she moves quickly through her way until they finally managed to get to the entrance door avoiding every single security camera.

“Wait”, mutters she looking at the door, the same moment Bucky hears someone coming from behind.

_< Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable>  
_Bucky hears his own voice saying that in Russian, in a memory that involves a young girl, maybe too young to be considered more than a child, with the same red hair and green eyes, though the ice in them were overwhelming.

He pulls her close by her arm and, without any warning, he kisses her deeply, taking her face tenderly between his hands while she puts her hands around his waist and pulls closer.

It looks like a passionate kiss but is not and they both play the part until the steps move away in an urgent pace.

Just after that he lets her go and opens again his eyes to look at her closely, this time with nobody else around to keep him from his own doubts.

“… James”, says she softly, her hands going up to touch his face.

“Why can’t I remember you?” asks he confused, especially after the way she calls him, “You said I shot you before, in Odessa, but if that’s true then I would have killed you, my orders were always to never leave a witness alive… Why did I let you live?”

Her smile hesitates then, “I was hoping you could tell me that.”

Bucky let her face go and leans his back against the wall behind him, “I… I don’t know.”

Once again she gets closer and her hand brushes his cheek, a loving touch that feels so familiar he closes his eyes and bows his head gently towards it.

“Guess it’s better this way”, says she in the same low voice and her strange undefined accent, “You knew me before that, you may not remember but you trained me.”

He thinks that makes sense, his very specific skills made him always a good instructor for agents trying to infiltrate the US. But then the images he has about her were from a girl, hardly older than thirteen, not the woman she is now.

“You helped me escape from them”, says she finally, her eyes showing the gratitude she meant with her words, “I owe you as much as I owe Barton or S.H.I.E.L.D., maybe even more.”

He looks back at her still confused. How could he do such a thing when he was always so controlled? That would mean he got to make his own choices at some point, not too long ago. Then what happened?

“You’re a good man, James”, says she finally with a smile on her lips before she gets closer and leaves a soft kiss on his lips.

“No”, says he looking back at her without responding her kiss, “No, I’m not.”

She smiles, “Yes you are, you always were”, says she without letting him go, keeping him warmly tied in her net, “They tried to change you but you always fought back. I saw you, I saw how they have to manipulate the truth to make you obey them and I saw how they could never beat your stubbornness. That was the thing I admired the most from you, the way you could bend and endure and wait until you find the right moment to strike back.”

He looks even more confused than before, “If that’s true, then why can’t I remember anything about that? I got most of my memories back but nothing about what you’re telling me… Just… Glimpses, like pictures or, more like a feel, that something there is missing.”

She finally let go of him, her hands sliding down to the collar of his hoodie, aligning the black draw cords of it, “My guess is that with me they knew exactly what to erase from you”, says she taking a step back for him to just then realize how close they were, “While your life, your story with Steve, they could have never imagined the truth between you two.”

Bucky looks back at her with his jaw dropped.

“… You know?”

But instead of a good answer, she smiles mischievously before she says “Now I do.”

Played by the spider. Just like when she arrived and deflected the attention from her.

She was really _really_ good.

And maybe, if she’d been telling the truth, he could even feel proud about it.

“C’mon, James”, says she two steps ahead, “We still have to see what’s behind the curtain.”

Bucky follows her into the warehouse, starting to search anything that may look suspicious but at least at the beginning they just found groceries and a couple of boxes without any sign on them, but with enough dust over to indicates they hadn’t been moved in a long while.

It’s the lustrous trail on the floor what leads them to the back of the store, where the wall was emptied and extremely clean compared to the one beside.

“It’s not real…” says Bucky getting closer, trying to push it, thinking it may be a pass through another facility, but he just stumbles upon a soft silky surface covering the cement, “What’s this?”

Natasha gets closer to check on it too, taking it carefully between her fingers. “It’s holographic fabric”, says she finally, looking inside her pocket to throw a small disc which discharges an electric wave, immediately revealing what was behind it.

Both took a few steps back, watching in front of them the whole wall covered in carved strange symbols, with circles, rhombs and lines, connecting everything like a formula or a design.

“What the fuck is this?”

“I have no idea.”

 

 

That night he spent it alone in his room.

It was after a strange conversation he had with Steve that he left.

“You know Natasha is not free”, said Steve with his arms crossed over his chest and something upsetting in his voice while he spoke, “She belongs to someone else, a good friend of mine, and it’s not ok to fool around with an engaged woman.”

Bucky looked back at him, knowing exactly why he was saying that and wondering how fast and far the gossip of him kissing Natasha had moved already.

“I doubt she’d like to hear you talk about her like that”, said Bucky tempting his luck.

“You are playing with fire, Buck.”

Bucky smiles back before he said in russian “< _Fire is just a little relief for the Winter >._”

That was when Steve left and didn’t return until a couple of hours before dawn, finding Bucky sitting on his bed, with his sight lost a thousand miles away in front of him, trembling and sweating.

“Buck?”

He doesn’t get any response until he tries a few more times, sitting next to him and touching his right shoulder, “Bucky?”

Slowly his sight returns from that lost place he’d been for countless hours, looking back at Steve like he wouldn’t know who he was.

“I can’t remember my mission”, mumbles he finally, scared of what he’s confessing and how high the prize it would be for his downfall, leaning against Steve who holds him tight, “I can’t fail again… I can’t fail… But I can’t remember my mission…”

Steve leaves a soft kiss over his forehead before he says, “There’s no mission, Buck. You’re free now.”

The sun is starting to rise when Bucky stops crying and falls asleep.

 

 

He feels drained the next morning after just a couple of hours of sleep, coming out of his room with his hair in a messy bun and his face paler than the usual, with the black marks under his eyes back to the way they were when he arrived to the Playground for the first time.

He was barefoot and wearing his usual hoodie over his pajamas, yawning a bit when he bumps against Natasha in the hallway, leaving someone else room trying to not make a sound. Her hair is messed up and her clothes backwards, with one of the straps of her shirt torn and tied badly at her shoulder, some visible scratches across the skin of her back.

She turns to find herself in front of Bucky staring back at her, guilty written all over her face.

“I won’t ask”, says he after an awkward pair of seconds, taking off his hoodie and offering it to her.

“Good, ‘cause I won’t tell”, says she putting it on to cover herself up to her thighs, “Breakfast?”

Bucky shrugs and gallantly let her lead the way to the elevator, watching quickly over his shoulder from which door she’d come out, reading _‘Agent May’_ outside of it.

“Are you coming, James?” asks she holding the lift’s door for him, making Bucky shake himself from his own awe.

“Where is Steve?” asks she while looking herself at the mirrored surface, arranging her hair in a little ponytail.

“Still sleeping when I left”, says he looking down to not see his own reflection, still not wanting to face what the last night left on him.

“Did you two…?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and growls, “We are not… That.”

She smiles as the elevator’s doors opens, “Don’t need to get mad, James, it was just a question.”

Strangely it was similar to the question Sam has for them. Once they get to the cafeteria he was already there, dressed up casual and eating with Maria, with their hands fidgeting together and giggling to each other until they saw them coming in.

Three seconds later Maria was leaving the place with just a single smile to Natasha.

She didn’t even look at Buck, ignoring him completely.

“Don’t tell me you two…” starts to say Sam while each one of them grab a chair on his table.

“No”, says Bucky instantly.

“Not with him”, says she with a smile, taking a bagel and starting to pinch pieces of it to eat them, “She’s still not over Barnes, is she?”

Sam looks at the door and then at Bucky, “I’m sure it’s not really personal, but you remind her of everything she lost because of HYDRA.”

Bucky nods, “I understand.”

Somehow it was good to meet someone who wasn't completely forgiving about his past.

 

 

It’s just past ten and breakfast with Natasha and Sam had been one of the greatest experiences Bucky had in a while. Between the way Sam could make every single story something comical and how Natasha’s dark sense of humor was the perfect combination with that, they spent the morning sitting at the cafeteria and talking about stupid things while instructing Bucky about some other stuffs of modern days he didn’t know, like free love and video games, also about Sam’s work with veterans at the V.A., sliding the chance he might like to see what was all that about one day. No pressure.

Bucky’s taking his third cup of coffee when Trip enters the cafeteria, in a quick pace and a blank look on his face.

“Skye needs you at coms”, says he before he grabs an empty chair and a plate with some fruits, “Steve’s there too, so I guess that includes also you two”, adds looking from Natasha to Sam before he takes also some yogurt.

The three of them stand up and move fast, following Bucky who’s the one who knows where they should be heading.

Elevator stops in the fifth floor and then he turned to take a few steps up to the cube where Skye’s personal workspace is, where she’s standing there with her face buried in Steve’s chest, sobbing softly.

The three of them stop at the door, waiting until Steve notices them and nods to allow them in.

“Skye… They’re here…” says he gently and she pulls herself back and cleans her face with the back of her sleeves, glancing a wet smile to them.

“I’m sorry.”

“What happened?”, asks Bucky, immediately getting closer to her, his hand on her shoulder and worry on his face.

“It’s kind of personal”, says Steve but she denies with her head.

“No, it’s ok, you should know everything before you go into the next mission”, says she moving towards the holotable and displaying in front of them the blueprints of a massive facility in the middle of some mountains.

“I found this because I was following a lead about my parents”, starts to explain Skye, leaning against Bucky for support while speaking, “It seems somehow they end up in here about thirty years ago, before I was born.”

“What are you saying?”

She breathes deeply before she says, “That this whole Prodigy Serum, the whole project, started with them. They were the subjects _zero_ and _one._ Then they escaped and HYDRA sent agents to kill them. They found them somewhere in China and, just because two agents disobey their direct orders and rescue me, I’m alive now.”

This time is Bucky who holds her tight, leaving a soft kiss over her head.

Steve looks at the blueprints and then his sight move to the rest of them, determination gleaming in his blue eyes.

“We go tonight”, orders he and both Natasha and Sam nods in agreement, “This looks like a scientific facility, labs are here and here…” starts to say he pointing at the elevated map in front of them, “Guards should be posted here, here and on every main entrance…”

“Stop”, says Bucky still not letting go of Skye, who was now shuddering on his arms, “We can’t just storm inside this. We don’t have enough intel about this base.”

“It’s HYDRA and has been operative at least since the eighties”, says Steve resolved on get this done the way he’s planning, “That’s enough intel for me.”

Bucky looks at Sam, who seems to be very pleased to take Steve’s side; then to Natasha, who just shrugs and nods to what Steve’s saying.

That’s when Bucky rolls his eyes and gives up, “Of course that’s enough for you, giant reckless jerk.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again thanks for reading.  
> I thought I could write the russian parts but then I thought I have no way to know if it was right or not (can't trust Google Translate for this), so I decided it was better to use the Comic way.  
> If you're curious about Fitz/Simmons/Trip, that's coming in another story that's part of this serie.  
> Same with what really happened between Bucky and Natasha.  
> And some other details too.
> 
> Hope you like it and, as always, if you have something to say, please leave a comment, even if its just to say hi! It really makes my whole week.


	6. Puppets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge SO to [Stringlish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Stringlish/pseuds/Stringlish) for the Beta and for correcting my broken english. Hope you like this one and, if you do, leave a comment because of reasons.

\--- 

 

Bucky stays with Skye until a smile is back on her lips, natural and beautiful, just the way it should always be.

He understands her suffering. He lost his family when he was just a child; he lost his parents and then his sisters, when child protective services took them away to take care of them. A few times he thought of looking for them, for their families or whatever he could find after all those years, but it was something to be haunted by his own past and another very different path to reach for people that never knew anything about him, but what history could tell. It was better to leave it that way.

There was no point in going back when there was nothing left for him.

Once he leaves Skye with Jemma and Fitz, who’d come to check her with the perfect excuse of this new mission, he goes immediately after Steve.

He had to stop him. That was the only thought that runs through his mind when he finds him in front of a holotable on the fifth floor, going through the blueprints of the Hydra base he was planning to storm that same night. Natasha was standing in front of him still wearing his large hoodie, holding her hand on her chin in deep concern. Sam was on his right, looking down at what he was pointing out as a way in on the main building’s blueprints.

“Can I speak with you?” asks Bucky, standing by the crystal doorframe.

“Sure”, says Steve raising his sight to him, “Come in.”

Bucky looks at Sam and when he sees Natasha, she’s already moving, understanding what was this about.

“In private”, specifies Bucky, holding his ground, his arms crossed and a neutral look on his face.

“Perfect timing, James”, says Natasha, stretching a bit before she starts to walk past him through the door, “I need a shower… Are you coming, Wilson?”

Sam looks quickly to Steve before he goes after her, “Are you inviting me to scrub your back or something?” asks he behind her.

“Only if you bring Maria with you…” says she suggestively, giving Bucky a last look before she turns the next corner with Sam by her side.

Just then Bucky turns again to Steve, uncrossing his arms and walking towards him.

Barely midday, he looks tired and worn out. Maybe the incident last night was hard on him too. Maybe it was everything he’d been through the past few days. Or months. Or decades.

“You're coming with us, right?” asks Steve once Bucky stops by the blueprints, looking down at the plans and the few arrows drawn over it with the perfect poise of the artist Steve had always been inside all those serum enhanced muscles, a tender memory that just restores his own will to do what he’s about to do.

“Hell no”, says Bucky in return, looking up at him from the other side of the holotable, “And you shouldn’t go either.”

The captain looks like he’s about to say something, but Bucky continues before he has the chance to even open his mouth to protest.

“This is a whole new level of reckless, even for you”, he adds glaring, as if it was a contest.

“We don’t know what’s in there now. Skye said she can’t get anything else from it. With just these old blueprints, which are not even up to date; to go on, by now they would be expecting us. For all we know this could be a trap.”

Steve stands tall and crosses his arms over his broad chest, staring at him with his jaw clenched, “That never stopped us before.”

Bucky knows exactly what he’s talking about, why he’s trying to bring back the old days together and use those memories to prove his point, but he’d outgrown that a long while ago.

“You should leave this to us, Steve”, he begs finally, straightening up and pulling his shoulders back a bit too.

Steve smiles in an ugly cynical way he’d learn to hate, “And who is _us_ , Bucky?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.” he answers immediately just to watch him snort in disdain.

“You think Coulson’s team has a better chance to bring down this whole base than us?”

“Once _we_ get the right intel and we know what we are dealing with, of course”,  he explains defensively, making sure to point out he was part of that team now, “This is what I’m supposed to do here, this is why they brought me in…”

“Is that what they told you?” asks Steve leaning forward a bit, resting his hands over the crystal surface of the holotable, making Bucky flinch not just for the sudden movement, but mostly because of that question.

“Yes.”

Though the answer burst out like a reflex, he knows he’s lying and he’s not sure he can hide that from Steve. He knows it doesn’t sound like himself, not even this new facade he’s now wearing, that’s still not completely human but more than the ghost he used to be.

Steve’s gaze intensifies and he knows he’s lost, so he adds the truth, “And to keep you away from all this.”

That’s definitely something Steve was not expecting, for the way he frowns and looks confused for a brief moment, just to look suspicious the next second, “Keep me away from what exactly, Bucky?”

A sad little smile crosses his lips before he says “The fall of Hydra, everything I’d been doing recently. All this shit… You can’t get involved in this…”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s my mission!” he replies roughly, “Protect you! Keep you safe. You have always been my mission, Steve. You know it…”

Steve gasps when he hears him say that, but soon enough he looks away and then down at his own hands for a brief moment, then he stares back at Bucky. Keeping silent for a few more seconds while he was clearly pondering over what he’d say.

“It was Fury who asked you to do that, right?”

Bucky purses his lips a bit before he answers slowly again, “Yes.”

Then the grin in Steve’s face turns into that same anger he’d been wearing like a second skin all the time.

“Of course he did”, says he bitterly and a little sarcastic, “He would have said anything to make you join him.”

Bucky knows it’s true, he knew what Fury was trying to play with him from the very start, but there were a few other reasons he had then and now to accept his offer.

“It’s not like that…” tries to explain, but Steve’s not listening to anything he would say that could make him change his mind right now.

“He’d been manipulating us both all this time.”

That’s true too, but then there’s something else.

“But he’s right!” protests Bucky leaning a bit more against the table between them both, “This is not your war, Steve! You shouldn’t…”

But those words are a trigger he wasn’t expecting to shoot.

“DON’T TELL ME THIS IS NOT MY WAR!” snaps Steve, his voice raising like he never used to do, except for a handful of chances, making Bucky stand back startled, holding his breath.

“I lost everything because of Hydra and I swore I wouldn’t rest until everything went down”, continues Steve with the strong conviction he owns bonded to his own soul, “We are doing this tonight. You can come with us or not, that’s your choice, but you can’t tell me this is not my war”  he adds before he lowers his voice for him, staring deeply into his scared blue eyes with his own, “Not you, Buck, not after everything we both…”

 “SHUT UP!”

This time its Bucky who can’t deal with what he’s saying, or better with what he was forcing Steve to keep to himself.

As he looks back at him, he can see clearly the pain behind the anger and of course he can’t blame him for that. They took everything from them, but it wasn’t just Hydra, it was long before that, even before war, when it was just them against the world. Even then that was the only thing he could do to keep them both save: Keep it locked inside, never let out anything. Just shut up. Always shut the hell up.

His breathing slowly returns back to its normal pace before he can look away from Steve’s eyes, so filled with passion it hurts him deeply, not because of what he’s feeling but for what he shouldn’t be feeling anymore. It’s been such a long time, anyone would have expected this kind of flare to be extinguished already.

And yet, there he was.

“I really don’t know you anymore”, Steve finally says, breaking him with those final words and forcing him to hold on and bite his lip to not let him see it, while Steve walks past him towards the door to leave, Bucky’s looking down at his own clenched hands and the shattered crystal below his metal fist; he doesn’t know when that happened, “I’m sorry, Bucky, but even without you, I’m doing this.”

 

 

“You can’t do this!” says Director Coulson that afternoon in his office once he’s informed about Captain Rogers plans.

Bucky’s beside the door, his shoulder against the wall and his arms crossed over his chest, keeping guard that nobody else interrupts that meeting. Specially the kids who’d been roaming behind them the whole day, waiting for their turn to be useful.

Inside the director’s office, the golden team is facing not just Coulson but also Maria and Melinda, each one playing their part as the good or evil conscience, though he’s not sure which one is who.

“Captain Rogers is right, sir”, says Melinda, standing straight and tall with her hands crossed in front of her, “If this base had been operational for so long, it had to be one of the main centers of this whole project we’d been hunting down.”

“And your best chance to get good intel about it now that the last lead burnt out”, Natasha adds with the same voice Agent May used, making Bucky think if that coordination had something to do with last night or it was just the way super spy chicks were meant to be.

He can’t help but agree with what she said, though the _burnt out_ part was uncalled.

“No offense, Captain, but it’s stupid to attack this place mindlessly when you don’t know anything about what’s inside of it now”, Maria points out this time, taking the other side of that argument, “You said you only have the blueprints of it and some old files about what Hydra did there, about thirty years ago, but nothing recent.”

“That’s why we are not taking any of your team”, Steve replies with his hands gripped on his belt and his broad shoulders taking the space of two and a half regular guy, talking directly to Coulson after he’d left the others speak freely for a while, “I know the risk of this mission and I’m not asking you to follow my lead on this. Hydra had been making these kinds of experiments since the Red Skull was the main head of the snake, and it has caused a lot of pain through the years…”

At that point Bucky turns his head and choose to stop listening to that speech, even though he knows it’s mainly directed to him, to make him change his mind, because why else would he have to bring up all that now? He knows Steve better than anyone. He knows the power his words carry, the way he inspires everyone with just…

“Agent Barnes?”

Bucky raises his head and looks at Director Coulson, who’s apparently waiting for his answer about a question he didn’t hear.

“Sir?”

“I asked you what you think?” he reiterates his inquiry.

Bucky glances at Steve, then quickly at Natasha and Sam. He’d fought the three of them and knew that it was just them and some support that took down the helicarriers, the Triskelion, Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. in just a few minutes. They even took him down, he reminds, begrudgingly.

But still.

“I wouldn’t recommend the attack until we have some intel of what we’ll be dealing with once there.”

“If we wait any longer they’ll know we’re coming for them”, says Steve directly arguing with him.

“For all that we know, they might already know that”, Bucky counters dryly.

“More reason to move faster and not give them the chance to arm themselves against us!”

“They had been there for thirty years, you stupid punk, what do you think they’d been doing there?”

“That’s enough!” Director Coulson cuts in, with his voice raised a bit over his normal pitch, though enough to call them both back to calm, “I think you have made your point very clear for us all, Agent Barnes. Thank you.”

Maria looks at them with her lips tight, her gaze stopping on Sam for a while longer, who smiles back at her like he’s apologizing in advance; Melinda and Natasha are both looking to each other with a smirk on their faces that suggests to him they’d made a bet about this of some kind. He’s actually sure about that now that he thinks about it.

The real challenge is between the Captain and the Director.

He knows how difficult it is for Phil to stand against Steve. He knows the absolute adoration he has for the Captain, the hero, the legend, and it’s clear that he’s struggling to keep that apart from the decision he has to make.

After a moment that feels like an awkward silent eternity between them all, finally the Director speaks.

“I know I can’t stop you, or any of you, from doing what you want to do”, says he resting his hands over his desk and looking deeply into Steve’s eyes,  “But I’m not risking any of my team in this.”

And after he says that, Phil’s eyes glances quickly towards him, just in case his words were not clear enough to inform him that he wasn’t allowed into this madness either.

“I never expected any of your team to join me in this mission, Phil”, says Steve in a bit of a condescending way that bothers him but doesn’t seem to affect the Director’s firm stance.

“However, I may provide you with an extraction once you’re done“, he replies thoughtfully, this time glancing to Melinda at his side before she nodes in approval, “It’s better if you leave the place and return here quickly and, hopefully, in one piece.”

Steve nods, still holding his heroic posture and the affected look on his face.

“Thank you, sir”, says he before he turns to Natasha and Sam, who are ready to follow him out.

Just then Bucky catches his sight while he moves away from the doorway.

“Are you coming, Buck?” asks Steve and his voice is a plea to not disappoint him anymore, but he just looks down and then away as the only answer he could give him right now, then he walks past him to get closer to the director’s desk and make it clear where he’s standing on that.

It’s better if he keeps thinking that he doesn’t know him anymore. It’s better if now he understands that he won’t go after him blindly like he used to. Not anymore.

Not this new self that he’s building over the wreckage that the old Bucky Barnes is.

He watches Maria go after the three of them and just then he looks up to Coulson, who’s staring at him with a frown on his face.

“Are you sure you won’t go after him?” asks the Director and Bucky frowns too, tightening his lips before he looks away.

No, he’s not. Whom is he trying to cheat?

He looks over his shoulder to the open door behind him, listening to the voices of the kids getting lost behind the golden team on their way to the elevator.

“You should go”, says Melinda after a short silence.

Bucky looks at her, then to the Director, who’s standing up straight again, apparently pondering the situation.

“Well, it was your mission to keep him out of all this, Barnes”, says Coulson with a harsh tone in his voice, though his eyes betray him showing a hidden smirk, “But instead of that you end up bringing him in.”

He’s telling him that he’d failed, but for some reason it doesn’t sound like a lecture.

“At least make sure this doesn’t get any worse”,  Coulson coerces, holding back a smile before he takes a seat on his director chair and waits for him to obey.

“Yes, sir”, says Bucky with a nod and a smirk on his lips too before he leaves, stopping a moment by the door to add a simple “Thanks.”

 

 

It takes him fifteen minutes to get ready, not just with his suit but mostly loading himself with his personal arsenal of knives, guns, chargers and little grenades, becoming more the winter soldier than the agent he’s supposed to be now.

But who cares?

As long as he can complete his mission this time, he doesn’t mind if he looks like Bucky Barnes or not anymore. He knows who he is, that’s all that matters.

Once he reaches the launching area near the garage, his particular strut gets the attention of the group near the quinjet Melinda will pilot, but before he can get to them is Trip and Skye who stand in front of him.

“Don’t tell me you’re going with them now”, begs Skye, looking up and down at him.

“I am”, says Bucky in return.

“Damn it!”

“I told you”, Trip mocks condescendingly, beside her, with his hand extended toward her. A moment later she pulls out ten bucks and pays him with a grunt.

“Oh, c’mon, guys!” says Bucky rolling his eyes, “Really?”

“She said you’d go _after_ …” Trip explains, handing him a rifle; his favourite one, and a huge heavy bag with some other guns they usually carry with on their missions.

“I wish I could give you more intel about that place”, says Skye by his side, her voice transparent on her own self-consciousness, “But I’m completely in the dark with this.”

“It’s ok”, says Bucky with a smile trying to lift her spirit to her normal cheerful self, “We’ve done worse with a lot less information. We’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, and I wish I could go too, pal, but Coulson said we have to stay here and let the heroes work in peace”, says Trip looking briefly towards the group gathered around Fitz and Simmons, who are giving Natasha a new pair of her widow’s bites and checking on Sam’s falcon gadgets, while Steve’s talking with Melinda and Morales near the gate.

“But, seeing as we can’t go and we can’t do much from here either…” Skye begins; her voice coy, while Trip gives him a little button with a silver star in the middle, “We thought you could call us if, you know…”

“What’s this?” asks Bucky taking a better look at it.

“Just in case”, she adds with a playful smirk on her lips, “It’s encoded to work in a particular UHF channel only we have access to, so nobody will know if you use it but us…”

“You might need backup there”, explains Trip, with a little shrug of his shoulders.

Bucky takes the button and then pins it inside of his jacket.

“You can go with the heroes now”, Skye says with a smile on her lips, just the way Bucky likes to see her, “But don’t forget we are still your team.”

He smiles and leans to kiss her forehead before he says, “I know.”

He takes the bag of guns firmly with his left hand and holds the rifle on his right shoulder while he struts closer to the rest of the group, passing close to Sam who’s shamelessly admiring Coulson’s vintage car beside him.

“Don’t touch Lola!” Bucky warns the Falcon, now wearing a whole stealth suit in black, with red and white touches, and a fancy backpack with his new wings.

“Damn!” he yelps when he sees Bucky’s right beside him, backing from the Director’s car, “You really _are_ a ghost!”

“I told you…” Natasha reminds smugly, getting closer and taking the lead to the quinjet, where Steve’s standing by, waiting for them to get in and depart.

“So you’re coming?” the Captain inquires softly once Bucky passes him, the last one boarding the cargo bay, before the gate starts to close.

He leaves his guns down on the floor before he turns to Steve, grinning sheepishly.

“Someone has to take care of you.”

The blue of Steve’s eyes seem to shine brighter a moment, or at least that’s what Bucky thinks when he sees him staring back at him, but its the little curve in his lips where his smile lingers what takes his breath away for a moment.

Once Steve starts to explain his plan, its pretty obvious to him that the Captain never really considered the possibility that he wouldn’t come with them, because everything was constructed in a way where each of the four members would be necessary for the rest of the operation.

“Sam and Buck should take the south”, explains Steve over the blueprints of the four-story building in the middle of nowhere in Montana “The hills behind the main building will provide you cover to penetrate the perimeter easily and access this area, where you should find one of the security systems panels…”

The plan was, as always, storm quickly and merciless through one flank to be the distraction so the stealthy team could make the real damage. The first part was his duty, to get inside with Sam and open a breach for Steve and Natasha on the front, where they could easily get to the main control, where she would crack their whole systems with _her superior mind._

Her own words to describe herself.

And he would agree with that anyway.

They’re already prepping themselves when she gets closer to him to speak apart from the others.

“I don’t like this either, but he’s got a point”, she admits while checking her new widow’s bites more carefully.

“What’s that?” Bucky asks beside her, looking over his shoulder to watch Steve talk with Melinda at the pilot cabin and Sam picking some of the guns he brought too.

“We still have the element of surprise in our favor”, she replies, a little smile on her full, beautiful lips, “Besides, two super soldiers in our team is a huge advantage.”

He smiles too, looking down at her green eyes, “We are still not bulletproof, though.”

She pats his shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.”

Considering how reckless Steve has always been and that he would be on the opposite side of that building and unable to cover him if necessary, sending Natasha with him was the only thing that could help his peace of mind in that moment.

“You better…” says he with a harsh tone of voice while adjusting his leather glove on his metallic hand.

Nat giggles a little before she leans on him a bit, “You two are so alike.”

He raises his eyebrows and looks at her again, “Is that meant to be a compliment or something?”

“Kind of”, she says, getting on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “It means there isn’t much left of _the American_ …”

He frowns when he hears that, like a déjà vu that stings deeply, digging into some memories he can’t reach completely, but he’s sure they’re there, somewhere.

“Sam! Buck!” Steve calls, taking him out of his reverie, “It’s time!”

Bucky finishes loading his pistols and securing them on each holsters before he turns to Sam and stands beside him by the back gate that starts to open in front of them.

As always the vertigo strikes him hard, but all the same, he fought it back to stay focused on the mission.

“Behind this hill is the base”, says Steve, his voice sounding clear through the communicator in his ear, “Sam will fly you two above it and into the south side of the building, then it’s up to you.”

Bucky nods while he looks down at the hundreds of feet to the ground and breathes slowly; his fear of heights is not completely cured after all.

“Call you in five”, says Bucky before he feels Sam holding him from his back, with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Ready?”

Bucky just nods again in response, closing his eyes and clenching his jaw as he feels the jump and then the wind against his face and messing with his hair.

“You’re heavier than you look”, says Sam behind him, gliding through the air with his huge pair of wings outspread.

“Brought an arsenal with me”, he replies with a smirk that Sam can’t see but surely can notice in his cocky voice, “Also, I had a huge breakfast.”

He listens to Sam’s clear and strong laugh, though he’s sure that wasn’t funny enough to make him crack like that.

They land near the top of the hill, climbing what was left to get the perfect view of the Hydra base in front of them.

Just as planned, it was a four-story building, though each floor looks double the height of any normal one and, for the lights on the windows he could see, it was because some of the plants were divided in two separated floors in some places. That meant the blueprints were definitely out of date.

“Look”, Sam points to the guards making their round outside of the gate, holding simple rifles and equipped with light armor. For what it seems, they’re not anticipating this attack to happen, “Let’s go!”

They slide through the steep hillside until they’re just a few steps away from the fence, the guards had moved away and everything looks easy.

“What’s that?” mutters Sam the same moment Bucky feels the ground shaking under his feet and the hillside behind him starts to crack open to reveal a hidden iron gate that starts to make an unbearable noise while opening.

Seems it wouldn’t be easy after all.

He covers his ears with both hands, at the same time Sam beside him does, closing his eyes too as a blinding light comes out of it.

The first blow they receive came from a sort of explosion, though there’s no fire or heat, just a wave that pushes both a few feet away, slamming against the irregular ground and making them roll a few more feet until they finally land near the gate.

Bucky stands up first, ready to take down what’s attacking them, but before he can see clearly again, there’s another blow, this time from a huge metallic boot, that takes all the air out of his lungs and send him back to the ground after another hit, this time a fist at the back of his head, leaving him dizzy for a moment.

Bucky pulls out one of his pistols and once he can raise his head again, he shots four rounds to the back of the huge guy that now is holding Sam by his neck a couple of feet from the ground, choking him badly, but every bullet ricocheted and he didn’t even flinch.

He gets up and attacks the guy, taking him by the neck with his left metal arm trying to choke him too and take him down with his own weight, but he ends up just hanging from his back awkwardly. Then he takes one of his knives and buries it deeply at his side, knowing that it should have perforated his lung, but that _thing_ didn’t seem to care either, taking him by the back of his collar and throwing Bucky over his head like he would have been nothing but a rag doll.

He manages to flip in the air, landing gracefully and ready to engage again, though this time directly to his face that looks contorted in a hideous cruel grin while he drops the unconscious Falcon to the ground, taking his first blow with his bare hand, the same that Bucky does when the stranger tries to hit him.

Just then, with his face just a few inches from him, he can recognize who he is.

“… Rollins?!”

What he gets for an answer is a head smash against his forehead that feels like he’d been hit by a truck, taking him another precious moment to get clear again, attacking during that time on instinct.

That’s when he remembers one of Fitz toys (high tech hardware, right!), taking out a small gun that blows a huge blue ray against Rollins chest, big enough to crush through the fence and inside the base, where the sirens alerting they are under attack starts to sound.

“Shit…”

He crawls towards Sam, rolling him over to check his breath and pulse.

“I’m fine…” mutters Sam, though he doesn’t open his eyes completely while he brushes him away, “Go… You have to…”

“I know”, he answers, pulling him closer to the hillside to get him out from sight, before he jumps inside of the main building through a window glass, not having time for more stealth movements now that the only edge they had was blown, and not only the sirens are blasting but also an intermittent red light is illuminating the way out for the guards he’d seen before in such a perfect order he doesn’t doubt it was very well planned and practiced.

Once inside he finds that he’s totally lost and that the blueprints were completely wrong, or at least extremely outdated. Worst of all, he felt a crack of concrete at his back and, the second after, it was Rollins in his new monstrous version that was again over him, pushing him down the stairs to a basement area that wasn’t on the planes.

Again he lands flawless and ready to attack, taking out his firearms and shooting him until he's out of bullets, but every single one ricocheted, even from his bare head and face. Next he bounces back against Rollins with a quick series of blows and knees that looks like a blurry dance between them both, though every movement was obstructed or simply pointless, feeling under the skin he was hitting a hard layer that wasn’t human at all.

Worst of all, he was getting really beaten up by this horrid version of the old S.T.R.I.K.E. member he knew before; it wasn’t just how hard he was punching him, or how fast he moves what hurts him the most, it was the way his face was disfigured with visible implants under his cheekbones, how his head was now bald and lines of circuits run over his skull and under his white pale and scarred skin, how his eyes were now inhumanly glowing red colored and his pupils seems to be adjusting too fast to be a natural movement.

What Hydra had done to Rollins was even worse than what they did to him.

He tries again to grab him, taking him by his face and rotating around him, trying to bring him down once more, but when he thinks he got him destabilized, Bucky feels a shock of electricity hitting him from his right side and he falls, his left arm receiving the main charge and ending idly worthless hanging from his shoulder.

He breathes heavily, the red light above him going on and off is starting to make him feel dizzy and the sound of the alarm, breaking inside his head like hammers ramming his skull.

“I’ve got a message for you, Soldier”, Rollins says offhandedly, grabbing him by the back of his neck and forcing him up just to smash him against the closest wall, with just his flesh hand able to prevent the impact and it wasn’t enough at all, because once Jack drops him, he falls hardly conscious to the ground, feeling the warmth of his own blood running down his face from his wounded forehead and when he opens his eyes and turns to look at the other guy, he can barely see with his right eye.

“The master says you’ve done well”, Rollins continues condescendingly, looking down at him with a terrible smirk on his lips, “You infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. perfectly and you’ve done everything that was expected from you…”

“… What?”

“… Nobody seemed to suspect you…”

“What are you talking about? I’m not…” but Bucky can’t finish his sentence once Rollins grabs him by his neck and raises him against the wall. He grasps as strong as he can at Jack’s forearm with his right hand, his left still malfunctioning, trying to set himself free, but it’s worthless.

“Yes you are”, says Jack holding him against the wall, “Of course you are. You really thought Fury wasn’t involved with us? He’s just another head of Hydra, sent to cut out Pierce when he messed it up the big plan. He should have killed you too, but decided you could still serve the cause if he could convince you that you were now working with the good ones…”

“That’s a lie…” gasps Bucky, still trying to set himself free, feeling his left arm starting to recharge very slowly.

“Is it? How do you think he knew exactly where to find you?”

How did he know? Because he was getting messier, because he was leaving too many shit behind, that was the reason Fury was able to find him. That HAD to be the reason.

But was it?

“You really thought you could be free?” Rollins chides at him closely and Bucky can smell the chemicals in his breathe, making him doubt in what he’d been certain for too long, “None of us would ever be free, Soldier. Hydra is everywhere, is in everything, in everyone around us. Sometimes they know it, sometimes they don’t, but even your Captain is one of us…”

But that was going too far.

“SHUT UP!” yells Bucky, kicking him before he’s able to force his left arm to work, punching him strongly to set himself free, gaining some distance to take a breath.

But Rollins is far from finished.

“Why do you think he forced you to come here?” asks with the same smirk, giving him a moment to ponder what he’s saying.

How could he know he didn’t want to come?

“… You had your doubts about this plan”, continues Rollins, getting closer in a slow menacing pace, “You knew this would be a trap, you advised him and Coulson this wasn’t a good idea… “

How could he know that?

“… Yet still, here you are, right where the master wanted you to be now.”

“No” Bucky mutters with his face starting to show clearly how hard he was struggling to not believe in what he was saying.

It was a lie. It had to be a lie.

“No” repeats he, trying to take a stand against what Rollins was saying, “I’m fighting against him, I’m destroying his bases, I’m…”

“You’ve been cleaning his traces.”

“NO!” yells Bucky while he charges against Jack, punching him desperately to make him stop speaking, because he couldn’t take it anymore, because his head hurts and his vision is blurred and confusion floods his own mind with what he’s hearing.

He’s messing with his head. He has to be. He has to…

Another blow and he ends up slammed against a metal pillar that bends dangerously to absorb him between the crooked iron bars, hearing in the distance the clear sound of an explosion and gunshots getting closer from the upper floors. It seems like Steve and Natasha managed to get inside without his help.

If they ever needed his help to get inside. If the doors were not wide open to let them get into their own part of this plan.

Could it be?

He get’s distracted with his own thoughts, his own doubts and this time it’s his ribcage that suffers from his mistake, listening to the clear sound of broken bones resonating through his whole body, making him scream in pain.

“Looks like your Captain is here…” mocks Rollins, “Probably with the Black Widow…”

Bucky crawls a bit before he feels the strong heavy boot of the other kicking hard his broken ribs, taking him off of balance to fall again to the floor, where Jack turns him to face the agent and pins him kneeling over his body, making pressure with his thighs on his wounded ribcage, then gripping his hands around his neck to start chocking him again.

“Did she called you by your name? I bet she did…” says he with that terrible smile on his lips over him, “She always knew how to control you and how to control Steve, that’s why the master sent her, just to make sure you’d follow the Captain as you were supposed to do…”

Bucky tries to push him but it’s useless, tries to release himself but he just can’t match the strength Jack Rollins now owns, not even with his metal hand recalibrating over and over.

“The master wants you to know you were a good Soldier, you served him well”, that monster keeps talking over him, “But you are no longer needed...”

He can’t breathe and the pain in each side of his ribcage isn’t helping at all with the lack of air.

“I know the Captain wanted to put you down, but I’m as good as he is and I want to be the one who kills the legend… The Winter Soldier, choke to death with my bare hands…”

He struggles once more, moving enough to grasp his favorite knife, stabbing the only part that didn’t looked like it could have a reinforced layer of armor under the skin: his left eye.

There’s a scream and then he feels the warmth of the blood splashing over his own face, but as he opens his eyes again he can notice the color is a closer to black and the smell seems like oxide.

Jack rolls while grabbing his eye, with sparks coming out between his fingers, allowing Bucky to breathe deeply before he realizes he has just one chance to win that fight and that’s his cue.

He grips his knife firmly again and jumps over Jack, stabbing him again, this time going deeper until he feels the blade going through something fleshy, red blood flowing out from his skull, mixing with the black one that now is staining his hands to his elbows while he gasps for air and for some release from everything he’d listen. His knife finds its way into Rollins skull a few more times while the explosions start to sound closer.

“BUCKY!”

He turns when he hears his name, watching Steve jumping down the stairs to get to him, followed by Natasha who was helping Sam to get there too.

“Oh God… Buck!” Steve groans as he clasps his shield at his back and gets closer, “What happened?”

And then, Bucky just sees red.


	7. Instincts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know it’s hard now... to tell the difference between what’s true and what’s a lie, but there’s one edge you have on this matter that they could never take away from you”, says she looking down at him, “Trust your instincts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the waiting but life and health issues are here to take the blame.  
> Thanks again to [Stringlish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Stringlish/pseuds/Stringlish) for the fabulous beta work in this one.   
> This chapter is dedicated to Jungkleinian, hope you get better soon!

\---

 

It doesn’t matter that his rib-cage is killing him, that every breath is an excruciating pain and that he can barely stand; he fights with all his might, with no mercy against the ones he now sees as his enemies.

“BUCKY! STOP!” Steve yells as he moves swiftly eluding his punches, stepping back until he’s against the wall. He quickly ducks to evade the metal fist that smashes the concrete where his head was placed just a second ago.

Bucky doesn’t stop. He keeps trying to punch him again, only to end with his metal fist blasting against the shield, pushing him back a few steps. He uses this time to take out his machine gun, firing the first four rounds into Steve who manages to cover perfectly; then the next round he aims is against Natasha, but before the bullets could blow off her beautiful head, Sam swoops in, shielding them both under the folds of his wings protectively. Bucky practically empties an entire clip; trying to aim for a weak point, before his gun jams.

“Fuck!”

He looks at the weapon briefly before he drops it, taking a second to pull out one of the smaller guns from the holster on his right thigh. It was a second too long. A blur of black and red bounds straight toward him. With a swift kick to his wrist, she effectively disarms him. Taking full advantage of her momentum, she coils downward and springs, swinging herself around and onto his shoulders. A shudder runs through him at the familiarity of the situation. However, instead of a garrote, she makes use of her widow bites. Not only electrocuting him, but he’s sure he could feel needles carving into his skin before he throws her across the room and into the Falcon. Two birds with one stone.

Steve engages him next, despite feeling his muscles starting to go numb and his sight loosing focus while he fights, he doesn’t stop. Not until Steve is able to catch every single one of his blows. Eventually he lands a hit to his cheek, knowing immediately; how ineffective it was. He didn't even flinch.

“BUCKY! PLEASE!” Steve begs, holding him firmly by the wrists, though the metal one seems to be harder to control. Bucky continues to struggle, into the attempt to set it free, before overbalancing. He could feel his consciousness fading quickly.

“You are Hydra…” he mutters trying to push Steve back, “You backstabbing son of a bitch…”

Steve holds him still while he listens to that absurd accusation “What? Bucky, no!”

“You are…” Bucky tries to speak again, tries to keep fighting, but his body no longer responds.

“Of course not! C’mon, Buck! How can you say that?!” Steve searches his eyes and Bucky starts to feel like he’s melting in his arms, his knees buckling until he’s finally kneeling, with the Captain keeping him from falling completely.

“You knew this was a trap… He said… Every word I told you…” Bucky starts to mumble, still trying to fight him back but by then his hand barely could brush against Steve’s face, “He knew… I didn’t want to come… How could he…”

His voice gets weaker with every breath, but still he fights to stay awake.

“Look at me, Buck!” Steve demands while he takes Bucky’s face and forces him to keep his drowsy eyes on him, “You know me! You know I would never, EVER be Hydra!”

Bucky stares back into Steve’s eyes and he knows, no matter what the truth is, it wouldn’t matter. In spite of Fury's warning against trusting the wrong people; he could never put Steve down.

That’s when he realizes he’s completely lost.

“I don’t know…” he whimpers, confused, by then just trying to remain conscious a bit longer is an effort. “I’m not… How could he know? How could he…”

Held tight in the Captain's arm, Bucky’s head lulls, leaning on Steve's shoulder while the rest of his body stays inert on the floor. His metal hand twitches from time to time, trying to respond to the less and less effective impulses he could give to it.

“He lied, Buck!” Steve replies earnestly, forcing him to stay conscious and keep looking at him.

“He was just trying to mess with your head, that’s what Hydra does”, Natasha says, inching closer, though keeping her distance, “You know how that works, James.”

Bucky tries to look at her but he feels the drowsiness get worse, “ … he said… you too…”

This time it's Steve who looks suspiciously at her, but she stays calm and just seems to be pondering the whole situation, “It’s possible that Hydra is still inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., even inside this little unit, or maybe inside of the base we were at…”

Then a low beep starts to sound on each one of their communicators, just to remind them that the extraction Coulson promised them was now in position.

“Speak of the devil”, Sam says beside Natasha looking down at the fallen soldier and the Captain holding him in his arms, waiting for instructions on what to do next if what Bucky was saying could possibly be true.

“We can’t go back”, Steve decides after a second of pondering their odds, “If there’s a chance that Hydra is inside of that base, we can’t risk him anymore.”

“But we can’t just disappear either, Steve”, Natasha differs immediately, “If they’re not all corrupted then there’s someone inside who’s informing Hydra. If we just ditch, then they’ll go after us, worst of all, we’ll be risking the others.”

Steve seems to reconsider, “Then what do you suggest?”

“You take him somewhere safe. I’ll go back to the base and cover it up for you.”

“And what would you say?”

“That you two needed some space and time to work things out”, says she with an obvious smile on her lips, “I’m sure nobody would question that.”

Bucky can’t see Steve’s face clearly, but he knows him too well to not doubt that he’s glaring at Natasha intensely.

“I’ll go back too”, informs Sam, “I’m sure Maria has nothing to do with Hydra and I won’t leave my woman there if she’s in danger.”

“You _really_ don’t know who your girlfriend is, do you, Falcon?” Natasha mocks before she kneels beside Bucky, taking off the bracelet that was on his idle right wrist, which was not just for coms; but, also as a tracker.

“I know it’s hard now... to tell the difference between what’s true and what’s a lie, but there’s one edge you have on this matter that they could never take away from you”, says she looking down at him, “Trust your instincts.”

She takes also the one Steve had taken off from his own wrist before she gets up again.

“I’m sure you’ll be able to take one of the vehicles outside”, she adds before she turns off the bracelets and then steps on them with her heel, “Call the ones you know you can trust; if S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised, then you can’t trust anyone inside.”

“Sounds familiar”, Steve sighs and looks down back at Bucky, who just can’t keep his eyes open any longer.

 

 

“Bucky“, he hears the voice calling him, “Bucky… Wake up, pal.”

It’s difficult to open his eyes, like his eyelids would weigh a ton. He tries to move but his body doesn’t seem ready to respond to his commands.

“Hmm…” he mumbles, trying again to wake up, barely opening one of his eyes to see Steve by his side, holding his face between his hands almost tenderly.

He slowly starts to remember, putting everything together.

First he realizes he’s sitting in the shotgun of a short bus or van, that smelled of dust and beer. He doesn’t know how long they've driven, but he notices that the night is almost over as the sun starts to paint colors across the sky on his right, just behind Steve’s figure, and he thinks for a moment that the light suits him perfectly.

Just after that, he manages to look past him, to the place where they are now. It’s a parking area near a huge wood and stone cabin in the middle of the mountains, pretty fancy for what he’s able to see.

“Where are we?” asks he softly, his voice barely a grunted whisper.

Steve smiles before he starts to help him move, responding with a simple word: “Safe.”

It’s not much of an explanation, but for Bucky it’s good enough.

He lets Steve take him by his waist to help him down from the vehicle, holding him tight when his legs don’t seem to respond to keep him on his feet properly. Carrying most of his weight while he stumbles almost every step until they finally make it to the front door. Which Steve opens, to allow them into a warm hall that ends in a splendid living room with a fireplace made of stones and a couple of old leathery comfortable looking seats in front of it. There's also a huge window with a panoramic view of the valley bellow covered in morning mist.

“Just… leave me here…” mumbles Bucky trying to point at one of the seats.

“No way, you need to rest properly”, Steve speaks in a low voice, carrying him past that area and to the first bedroom; “You were whining the whole way here, so don’t even try to say you’re fine because we both know that’s bullshit.”

Bucky is about to protest when a subtle movement drives a wave of pain from his rib-cage to the rest of his body. Moaning softly, Steve helps him to lay down on the bed, arranging the pillows under his head and pulling a quilt over his body to cover him.

It’s warm and cozy enough for Bucky to bring the drowsiness back almost immediately, looking at Steve next to him with a frown on his sunshine face. He holds his hand a moment before he moves closer to brush his long hair away from his forehead, where he ends up leaving a brief kiss.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything”, says with his voice low, so kind it feels like a lullaby.

 

 

“Mission report.”

Bucky opens his eyes slowly, feeling the pain of every muscle he’s aware of in his body. He tries to move but he notices that his wrists and arms are strongly tied with iron fetters, the same with his legs and ankles. He tries to look around but it’s dark and the smell of filth and rust is all around. It’s cold, maybe too cold, and his chest is bare with some nodes connecting to a machine that reads his vitals, the beeps starting to accelerate when he starts to panic.

He breathes heavily and tries again to get free, but he knows these kinds of binds and he knows he won’t get out of them; they were built to keep someone like him locked and secure.

“Mission report.”

The voice. He knows that voice. And once that thought crosses his mind he can see the figure of Alexander Pierce getting closer, into the dim light over him and out of the shadows around.

_But he’s dead._

Was he really? Did he ever see the body? Wasn’t Fury also supposed to be dead until he found him?

Just then he understand his situation.

He looks back at the man in front of him, glaring deeply into his eyes like he never did before, showing him that he was no longer his soldier.

“No.”

And just like it happened months before, he receives a cruel slap across his face, though maybe because he was already in pain, it didn’t seem to hurt at all.

“Mission report, NOW!” Pierce asks once more, obviously loosing his patience with his malfunctioning asset.

“No!” refuses he again, raising his voice for the first time against the man he once trusted and followed blindly, the man that once was the only one who could keep him steady with just his presence and just then Bucky finally realizes the reason of that; it was his golden hair and his blue eyes, and the tone in his voice when he speaks, everything seemed so familiar back then and now he knows why.

Where is he? If he’s trapped again by Hydra then Steve…

Maybe he was Hydra after all.

No, that’s not a possibility and he discards it immediately.

But if it’s not that, then the next thing is that he couldn’t protect him, he was overpowered and maybe he was taken too. Maybe he is…

He doesn’t allow himself to think past that; he doesn’t allow letting the option of Steve being dead even get inside of his head.

“It seems you were out for too long”, Pierce says with a sort of concern on his old lips, turning a bit to look for someone in the shadows before he orders “Wipe him.”

“NO! NO! DON’T!” Bucky begs while he notices the machine moving around his head and the electricity running through the panels closing over his ears, “NO, PLEASE, NO!”

“Don’t worry, you’ll cooperate after this, soldier.”

He screams in pain and despair once the shock starts to flow through his brain, feeling how it was burning his memories that took him so long to regain, how he was loosing what he had managed so hard to take back from himself, turning them into blank spots again like they were never there.

He tries to retain some of it, he tries hard to fight that but it’s useless and he just keep screaming in agony, staring back at the man in front of him, who was now leaning over and taking him by his shoulders, “MISSION REPORT!”

“NO!”

“MISSION REPORT, BUCKY!”

“NO! PLEASE, DON’T! PLEASE!”

“BUCKY! WAKE UP!”

He finally is able to move his hands and starts to fight back, pushing that man away from him, but he’s so much stronger than he remembers and doesn’t let go of his grip on his shoulders. He tries to punch his face but he moves faster and dodges him.

“BUCKY STOP! STOP!”

He tries to keep fighting, but instead of letting him go, the man just holds him tighter, surrounding him with his arms to make him still, even when he screams in fear.

“IT’S OK, BUCK” he hears the man speak near his ear, but his voice is different and alarmingly soothing, “It’s ok, it was just a nightmare. You’re safe... You are safe…”

He breathes heavily and even after he’d heard him say he’s safe, it doesn’t feel quite right. Bucky keeps whimpering while he still tries to get away from that grip, finally realizing it’s Steve who’s holding him and not Pierce.

He looks around, at the wooden walls and the wide window covered with old blinds blocking the sun outside, he feels the comfortable bed under him and, as he breathes deeply, he finally smells the scent of home that Steve always gives to him.

His hands stop trying to push him away; instead he grabs his jacket and pulls closer, trying hard to calm his breathing just to end up crying into his chest.

“It’s ok, Buck… I’m here… You’re safe…”

It was like a mantra that helped him while he keeps pouring out his fears and the memories he doesn’t want to keep anymore, the things he wish he could forget but he knows he would never be able to.

He keeps crying on Steve’s shoulder for a long while, feeling the tender fingers of the Captain running through his messy hair and across his back, calming him down until he starts to drift back to sleep.

 

 

Next time Bucky wakes up again its dark. Not completely night but the sun is clearly setting outside.

His head hurts, just like the first time he was shot with that _icer_ downer, but the lack of light seems to help his migraine to not get any worse. He looks around to see the door ajar and the smell of some food-cooking coming in with a pale light from outside of the room. Next to him is an armchair with a flattened grey pillow and a wooden blanket thrown over, giving the impression that Steve used it to keep guard on him at least for a while.

Bucky gets up slowly, his muscles still feeling sore though not as much as that morning. Walking inside of the bathroom to relieve his bladder. He realizes that he’s naked from his waist up, that there are bandages around his rib-cage and that his hands are clean. There's not a single trace of Jack Rollins’ blood or the other thick black fluid that came out of his skull when he killed him.

He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to get rid of that image but its useless.

He washes his hands after that, then his face and gets his hair wet enough to make it easier to pull it back, staring at the mirror for a while longer, taking out the patch that was covering his forehead where the deep wound was already healing.

Then he tries to find himself in that reflection, in those haunted eyes, in the painful smirk on his lips. Maybe he slept the whole day, but he still looks tired and he’s sure that won’t go away easily.

But then there’s something else, something he can’t really put a finger on, but that he can finally recognize as human, something familiar that wasn’t there before.

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes”, He says to that face in front of him, and he can see his lips moving and his eyes staring back, “You’re from Brooklyn, you were in the Howling Commandos, you were the Winter Soldier, you are now an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

He looks down a moment after that part. Was he still an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Maybe he could scratch that out in the meantime.

“Hydra used you for seventy years”, continues he looking back into his own eyes while he speaks, “You escaped, you turned against them. You are not Hydra anymore. You never were…”

He stops a brief moment to allow himself to believe in what he’s saying, believe that they’re not controlling him anymore.

“You know your mission. Stay focused on your mission.”

But right now the _mission_ was outside, making dinner, and the smell was turning him crazy after spend too long without anything to eat. He put on his boots and, just as a mechanical reflex, he also takes his knife with him before he starts to wander silently and carefully around the rest of the house.

It’s a beautiful place, though the darkness outside is overwhelming and just the sky full of stars and a pale half moon were showing that there was indeed something there.

Most of the walls were made of stone in a rustic but notoriously expensive kind of light brownish rocks, with wooden beams holding the high ceiling. He finds some paintings on his way, some of them looks like blueprints of machines, others are pictures of buildings and people, especially a few with a boy, about five or eight years old, with dark hair and eyes, playing and laughing in the snow, probably pictures taken outside during some long past winter.

When he turns the next corner he finds the living room again with the fireplace he saw when they arrived, still no fire lit in it, although the temperature around seems warm enough anyway.

Just a few more steps, and it’s the kitchen, with a square isle table in the middle where Steve’s serving two dishes with some stew that smells delicious.

“You shouldn’t be up”, Steve says with his eyes on the pan he’s holding, “I was going to take you something to eat in there.”

“Well, now you don’t have to”, Bucky replies while he takes a seat next to him, taking the dish he already served for him.

“You need to rest”, protests Steve, after he’d served the second dish for himself, Bucky notices that he’d gave him the bigger piece of meat, as always.

“I’m fine”, he says, taking Steve’s dish to exchange it with his, holding it down with determination just in case that stubborn punk would want to change it back.

Steve just glares at him for a few seconds before he drops it and gives him a big spoon to start eating, “You don’t look fine at all.”

“Yeah, usually happens after a couple of bad days” he counters, holding a little sarcastic smile on his lips a brief moment before he digs into his food, a chicken stew with some vegetables, everything canned for what he can tell by the familiar taste they have, remembering the few weeks he spent some months ago. Eating what he could find in the safe houses he would encounter or remember, before Fury found him.

He remains in silence while he eats, the same with Steve sitting across him, and he’s sure they both are thinking about what to say or how to start a conversation that wouldn’t mess with their appetite. However, it’s clear none of them could find the right way until they’re finish and the dishes are empty.

“So…” Bucky starts looking around, “Where are we?”

A simple question to start with.

“Tony’s house” Steve answers, following Bucky’s lead and looking around too, to the porch outside with a perfect view of the dark valley, and beside to the dinner table, covered with a white mantle to keep it from the dust, as it was probably underused for a long time.

“Howard’s son, I know”, Bucky interrupts before Steve adds it, sure that he would do that again and just like the first three times he referred to Tony before.

“Yeah”, he says nonchalantly, “Though, judging by the style, I bet it belonged to Howard and Tony doesn’t come here too often.”

“Why you say that?”

Steve smiles before he answers, “No tech everywhere.”

Bucky smiles too, then the silence falls over them again, both looking lost into the darkness outside for a long while.

“I was thinking…” Steve starts again, breaking the silence to call Bucky back into reality, “Maybe there isn’t someone inside of S.H.I.E.L.D. and, just like Nat said, maybe they were just listening…”

“Or maybe Rollins got some sort of mind reading power for free with all the enhancements they did to him”, Bucky adds to interrupt him, making him look back and face his questioning eyes, because if he really wants to talk about that then there are a few things he would gladly pull out of his mind too.

“You really think that’s possible?”

Bucky’s eyes wander a moment before he replies with a little shrug of his right shoulder, “I don’t know. I mean he knew exactly which buttons to push to make me believe in what he was saying…”

Steve nods in agreement, still pondering the possibilities, “That’s what Hydra does, they twist the reality and make you believe in things that otherwise you would never even consider. That’s how that works, I know the kind of speeches Pierce used to give to the people in S.H.I.E.L.D. to promote that Project Insight.”

Bucky lets out a sad chuckle, “Believe me, I know a bit about that.”

Steve looks back at Bucky with a clear regret in his eyes for bringing up the former Secretary in front of him.

“Still, that mind-reading thing is a better explanation than a traitor inside”, says Steve trying to keep the hopes high for both of them, “The team, they are good people.”

Bucky sighs deeply, crossing his arms over the table to lay his head down over them.

“I know”, he admits finally with a moan, tired of trying to keep finding them guilty of anything, to find a single glimpse of deceit in any action he’d ever seen, just to get the opposite every single time.

“I mean, think about it”, continues Steve, not letting the subject go “Coulson? The kids? From what I know, they proved themselves when everything went down after the Triskellion fell. And Trip? I’m sure Gabe himself would kick his ass if there was a tiny chance his grandson could be Hydra.”

Bucky looks back at him, agreeing with what he was saying, but still feeling confused about everything.

“I know”, he repeats with a frown creasing his forehead, “But still, I don’t want to go back there.”

“It’s ok, we don’t have to”, Steve calms him, “Nobody knows we are here. Tony promised me this was a safe place. He even mentioned something about a new defense system he’s developing that would help us keep out of sight if we need to, or something like that… I’m not sure, I never understand what he’s saying when he speaks tech.”

Bucky chuckles again and keeps staring back at him for a little longer, “What would you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are not staying here with me, are you?” he asks raising a bit his head, “I mean, as Captain America, I’m sure you have things to do.”

Steve looks startled with that question.

“I spent four months trying to find you, Buck”, he says lightly, “I think I can take a few more off the grid with you.”

Bucky just stares back at him, not knowing what to say to that, especially when Steve adds: “Til the end of the line, remember?”

Then he just smiles, the same way Bucky responds and they look to each other, Bucky loosing himself into the deepness of Steve’s blue eyes. His gaze traces downward until he finds himself looking down at his lips behind the stubble he obstinately opted to keep.

“I think I’ll take a shower”, Steve says, interrupting his thoughts before he could even realize what they were about, following him with his sights as he moves quickly out of the kitchen, “There are some canned fruits, pears and peaches and other stuffs. You should eat.” And with that he leaves Bucky alone in the kitchen, in the silence of that place that somehow seems a little less warm now.

He stands and takes the dishes to the sink, as if it were something natural. He realizes he’s going through the motions, doing as he remembers he always did whenever Steve went to his place to eat back in Brooklyn.

He didn’t look for the canned fruits. Instead he starts to wander through the shelves until he finds a wide collection of old whiskey bottles, staring at them for a moment before he takes two of them out, looking then for a glass to fill it with the first one, an Irish liquor  that he finishes maybe too fast, not knowing why was he trying to get drunk or if there wasn't any reason anymore.

There was, he knows there are some reasons to try to numb his mind when the silence starts to affect him. When the memories start to overflow within him, starting with Rollins dying by his knife. The last glimpse of humanity in the red of his blood spilled on his hands, the ones he’s watching, looking for some trace that it was real, that anything of that was real. However, there is nothing and the surrealism of the past day starts to feel too strange. Just like he could remember the past few months or even the past few decades, just by flashes of things he’s not sure if they were real or not, because some of them seem to _taste_ differently when he recalls them. Then there were other ones that are too bright to get ignored, no matter how much he wishes he could forget them.

“ You still can get drunk?” Steve asks coming back from his shower, wearing a white shirt over his uniform pants, with his hair wet and the stubble finally gone.

“Now you look like a person”, Bucky teases while he pours himself a new glass of the second bottle of whiskey.

“I didn’t do it because you told me, jerk”, he protests getting closer, standing on the opposite side of the table from him, “It was itching too much.”

“Whatever, man”, says while turning to take a glass for Steve too, just in case he wanted to drink with him, “It suits you better this way.”

Steve looks down at his glass and pours himself some whiskey too, just the right measure, not the almost triple Bucky was trying to finish.

“You didn’t answer.”

“What?” Bucky asks after he swallows a long shot.

“If you still can get drunk.”

He thinks about it a moment before he replies, “It’s harder than before, takes a couple of bottles, sometimes more”, he confesses as he looks at the bottle, thinking if it would be enough for him, or for them both, “But yes… I still can.”

Steve doesn’t look up from his glass.

“I can’t”, he says with some sort of sadness Bucky can’t understand until he starts to speak again, “I tried to get drunk after I lost you. I went to the bar we used to go on our leave days in London, it was more like wreckage because a bomb took out that entire block, but the guys took me there and we'd drunk every single bottle we could find. They left after a while and I just stayed there, still drinking, still trying… But I just couldn’t…”

Bucky is staring at him in silence, looking at the pain he can’t ease because it’s too late. Everything is too late when it comes to them.

He looks down and doesn’t say a word, because he doesn’t know what he could say to help him right now. Instead he just takes another long shot of his drink and then refills it.

Steve stays silent a little longer, like he’s considering something inside.

“I remember…” he says finally, with a little sad smile on his lips, “The last time you were drunk.”

Bucky breathes deeply, looking at him a moment before he looks away.

He remembers that too, but those memories are the kind he wishes he could forget, because they were just painful and nothing good came out of them.

“Steve… Don’t…”

“We’ve been avoiding this for too long, Buck.”

“Because there’s no point in bringing it back now, Steve” he says trying to stop it before it starts.

“Do you remember?” Steve asks, his attention rapt and his gaze searching as Bucky pointedly eludes him, “Please, Buck! Tell me if you remember!”

He just keeps his eyes down, fixed on his glass, trying to keep breathing normally though it’s getting difficult.

“You were drunk,” Steve continues, his voice a bit lower, like he’s trying to keep it calm, to not scare him again with the subject, “I carried you to our tent. You were scared of what would happen after the war, of what we would become. You told me you were afraid you would loose me…”

“Steve…” he whimpers, but the Captain doesn’t stop.

“We talked about that, we made promises that we would never be apart, that we would come back from war together and we would live together and we would grow old together…”

“Steve, please stop…” he begs but, it’s worthless. The final blow came after that.

“You told me you loved me.”

Bucky bites his lip and clenches his fists so hard his right hand starts to tremble, guilt running over his face while he keeps his eyes down on his glass of whiskey.

“You told me you loved me, Buck” Steve repeats, still looking for his eyes but keeping the space between them, just his words going after him, “And then you kissed me.”

“I was drunk!” Bucky tries to defend himself.

“Not the morning after!” Steve objects with the same determination, “Not when we made all those promises again.”

“It doesn’t matter!” he snaps, raising his voice a bit over the low octave they were both keeping until then, “It was too long ago! Why would you want to bring this back now? You already said you don’t know me anymore, that you’ve changed too, nothing of that matters anymore!”

Steve looks back at him with a sort of disbelief in his eyes for a second, before the determination flows back into them again.

“Did you mean it?”

Staring back into Steve’s eyes, that straightforward question was impossible to deny. “Yes”, he whimpers, feeling his lips throbbing after they’d speak the truth finally, “But it doesn’t matter because…”

“Do you feel the same?” Steve interrupts him before he can give another excuse.

“We’ve changed so much…”

“That’s not what I asked you”, he cuts him off again, “Do you still feel the same?” he asks again, this time dragging out every word slowly.

Bucky looks down again, wanting to end the conversation but knowing full well that he won’t be able to. He knows Steve too well to know he would follow him around the house, around those mountains, anywhere, just to get an answer.

“Why are you doing this, Steve?” Bucky asks with his still gazing at the table.

“Because I’ve been thinking a lot about us the past few years, since I woke up in this century”, he starts to explain, holding his glass in his hand but not drinking from it at all while he continues on, “About how it would have been so much easier now, nobody asking us anything, nobody talking behind our backs…”

“You don’t watch the news, do you?” Bucky snorts before he takes another taste of his whiskey.

“Still, it’s easier these days” Steve insists and Bucky knows he’s trying to make him believe in what he’s saying, “There wouldn’t be any dishonorable discharge, nobody would send us to get ‘ _cured’_ or would call us perverts… ok, at least most of the people wouldn’t.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am!”

“Why would you do that to yourself?” Bucky asks finally, “For all you knew I was dead. Why would you keep thinking about what could have been but never was?”

“Because I couldn’t get you out of my head”, says he as a confession, “I knew you were dead, I knew we would never get to live what we planned, but I just couldn’t let you go…” Steve’s voice cracks at that point, forcing him to stop a second before he could continue, “And I tried. Once I understood that I was stuck here and that I could never turn back, I tried to live my life, to move on, to have something with someone new, but it’s hard to find anyone with whom I could feel connected, and then there was always you… Always.”

“Steve…” Bucky mutters while he brings his hand closer to his, brushing his side softly as the little support he’s able to give him right now without breaking completely too.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok…”

“No, I mean…” Steve takes Bucky’s hand and holds it over the table while he continues, “I should have told you back then that I felt the same. I wasn’t sure, but I shouldn’t have let you go on thinking that I didn’t…”

Bucky takes his hand away and stares at Steve, at his eyes wet with emotions he’d never seen in them before.

“So, tell me”, Steve continues; staring back at him, “Do you still feel the same?”

Bucky opens his mouth to speak, just to realize he doesn’t have a straight answer anymore, “I don’t know.”

Steve looks battered with that, but he re-assumes his straight posture almost immediately, “Let’s try.”

Bucky doesn’t know what else he could have expected from someone as impulsive as Steve, but then again he’s not sure what he means with that.

“Try what?”

“If we still can have something” he tries to explain, taking a step closer to the corner of the table, closer to him, “If maybe we haven’t change that much… Just… Let’s try…”

Bucky frowns and looks down, starting to wander around his own thoughts of what he was asking, of what could that mean, even if all that was real at all or it was just an extremely elaborate delusion.

“Please, Buck.”

_Fuck it._

That was the last thought that crosses his mind before he gets closer, still standing at his own side of the table, with the corner between them. His metal hand over it while his right hand manages to look for Steve’s arm. Closing his eyes once he’s close enough just to open them again when he notices that nothing has happened, catching Steve in the same condition, with his eyes closed and waiting for him to make the first move. So, he makes it. Brushing his lips after his nose bumps against his, having to turn a bit to catch his mouth, that feels dry, just like his.

It doesn’t last long, just a couple of brushes and then he pulls back, looking down and letting go of Steve's arm immediately.

“That was…” he starts to say before Steve interrupts with the not-so-friendly truth.

“Terrible…” he says in a sad and awkward whisper, “I’m sorry… I’m so…” 

“It’s ok, Steve… it’s ok.”

But it’s not and he knows it, he can tell by the way that he’s sure he’s about to listen to his heart crushing. After everything they’d been through, after all those years and after the past few days still wondering if the flame he used to feel for him was still there; to finally crash against the cruel reality was by far the hardest blow he’d take since he can remember.

Was it over? Is that all that there is?

He finds himself fighting the urge to give up, to finally let go of that torment he’d been living almost his whole life. Because he doesn’t want to let go, no matter how it hurt, during most of his life that was the only strength he had to keep going. And _like hell_ he was about to let it go that easily.

“No, wait”, he says before he takes the final steps that were keeping him just out of reach, wetting his lips in the meantime, before he takes Steve’s face between his hands and gets closer, “I can do better than that.”

This time their lips seem to meld perfectly, kissing each other sweetly and tenderly. Bucky's hands sliding between the golden tufts of Steve’s soft hair while his strong hands encircle the brunette's waist, pulling him closer and closer until there was no space between them both.

Tentative at first, it was Bucky’s tongue which starts to explore Steve’s mouth. Playfully licking and lapping at his lips before their tongues entwine, twirling and massaging, but not long after; are Steve’s hands starting to cruise leisurely over the expanse of his naked back, touching his skin and every little scar he could find on his way up, and then back down. At the same time, Bucky’s hands start to roam around his neck and down to his chest and broad shoulders. Even still, trying to inch closer. This proves fruitless as he ends up pushing the taller man against the shelves behind him, lips still locked, now more desperate than before.

The need for air arises all too soon and his lips leave Steve's briefly; just to go right back to them with urgency.

Then Steve is the one who pushes against him, as his hands travel around Bucky's sides. Detouring slightly as one charts a map back up to the back of Bucky’s neck to keep his mouth trapped against his while the other starts an excursion down the small of his back and rests a bit lower. Bucky lets go of his mouth just long enough to pull Steve’s shirt over his head. Kissing his neck and trailing close to the shell of his ear. All the while he listens intently to the soft moans he’s eliciting from the blond, groaning in reply as he feels Steve’s hand grabbing his posterior and pushing him even closer, brushing against him until it’s clear this is no longer a simple kiss anymore.

“We should…” Bucky mutters trying to make some sense.

“Hmm?” Steve asks before he goes back to his mouth, kissing him deeply for a while longer until Bucky is able to move enough to point at the hallway to the dorms.

“We should… There…” he tries again before his mouth is captured once more.

Steve stops for a moment, though his lips never seem to leave Bucky’s skin, nodding then in acceptance or at least acknowledgment of his idea.

“Yes…. Yes we should…” he mumbles, pulling Bucky with him while he starts to walk towards there, stopping in the middle of the hallway to push him against the wall and keep kissing him. The idea strikes him as he hoists Bucky up by his thighs to lift him a bit; continuing this madness that is now both of them trying to get from the other, as much as they can.

Bucky settles slowly back to the floor, this time pushing Steve a bit; enough to start walking and leading the way. Pulling him by the waist of his uniform pants to kiss him a bit more while he manages to get them both inside of the same room he’d used for sleep the whole day.

It’s hard to take off his boots not wanting to leave Steve’s mouth for too long and the Captain not wanting to allow that either, so it doesn't take them long to finally strip to their underwear, crawling over the mattress, lips still engaged feverishly, until the need for air overtakes the need for contact. They breath together. Foreheads connected, noses brushing gently, feeling each others skin as if it's the most amazing thing any of them could have ever touched. Their breaths come in small pants, staring into each others eyes in that darkness of the night, still able to see the light inside of them.

Then Steve starts to giggle.

“What?” Bucky asks, his voice barely a moan.

“I’ve never done this before”, he confesses with his hands stilling on his back.

Bucky pulls back a bit to look at him, “What do you mean you’d never done this? Don’t tell me you’re a fucking virgin now because I know you’re not.”

“I mean with another man, you fucking jerk”, he explains to make himself clear, pushing Bucky down and then crawling beside him on the bed, “I don’t know how…”

He stops there to allow Bucky to understand the rest.

“I…” Bucky starts until he realizes he doesn’t know much more about that subject either, “Kind of know the theory…”

Steve laughs and goes back to his mouth, kissing him again and again, with his hands starting to drift dangerously inside of Bucky’s underwear.

“Why don’t we just…” Steve mutters, finally sliding his hand inside to take a firm hold of his completely hard cock, starting to pump it slowly as he hears Bucky starting to moan loudly.

“Oh Fuck… That’s… A good idea…” he whimpers before he does the same for Steve, taking him with his right hand to start following his rhythm.

“Oh God… It is…”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it (or not), please leave a comment.  
> Means the world to me.


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